Impacto de la innovación y la ayuda científico-tecnológica en los países en desarrollo

Abstract

One of the most unanimous results of the economic literature is that innovation is a critical factor for sustained economic growth. Despite this consensus, previous research on aid effectiveness has not studied the impact of aid resources devoted to promote developing countries’ innovation capacities. For this reason, this paper analyzes the impact of Official Development Assistance for Science and Technology (ODA-ST)through an endogenous growth model. The econometric estimation for the period 1993-2008 offers five main conclusions: i) ODA-ST effectively stimulates economic growth, ii)aid impact may be higher in countries with low innovation capacities iii) innovation exerts the strongest impact on growth, iv) income inequalities are an important obstacle for growth, and v) there is a a slow process of divergence in per capita income levels among developing countries.