Nivel de desarrollo y composición del comercio : el contenido tecnológico de las exportaciones

Abstract

Este trabajo plantea dos cuestiones: aportar evidencia empírica en la que se demuestra que, existe una estrecha asociación entre el nivel de desarrollo de un país y el protagonismo de las materias primas en sus exportaciones, y efectuar una evaluación del contenido tecnológico de las exportaciones de los países con objeto de evaluar la hipótesis de que cuando un país consigue mayores niveles de desarrollo los productos vendidos en los mercados extranjeros incorporan mayor intensidad innovadora.

This research is situated among the discusssions about the effects of trade composition on the growth of countries. It has two objectives. The former is to give empirical evidence to show the close association between the level of development and the rol of raw materials in the exports of a country, althouhg manufactures are getting more importance in the LDCs exports. The latter is to test the following hypothesis: higher levels of development are associated to higher technological contents of exports. A new simple methodology has been developed to evaluate the technological content of exports. The results support the hypothesis and, so, the relevance of the debate about the types of product exported by countries, even if LDCs, or at least some of them, are exporting manufactures.