Alexandre O. Vera-Cruz

Spillovers from MNCs through worker mobility and technological and managerial capabilities of SMEs in Mexico

Summary At international level, there is a consensus that the Multinational Corporations (MNCs) can function as a channel of diffusion of knowledge and technology, and that they can contribute to accelerate the economic development processes in the countries where they are established, by means of technological spillover effects. The spillovers are beneficial if they are captured by the firms linked to the MNCs. Human capital spillovers are associated with the continuous training of employees by MNCs and the mobility of these employees toward domestic firms. These spillovers, can contribute to the development of technological and managerial capabilities of the local firms, which in turn increase their absorptive capacity, This paper explores the spillovers from the MNCs through worker mobility toward small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and discusses to what extent the firms created by former employees of the MNCs have larger technological and managerial capabilities than those whose owners did not have this previous experience. This paper focuses on the case of the MNCs that operate under the maquila regime in Mexico and on the machine shops industry, a sector of SMEs that is a supplier of these MNCs. The source of information is a census carried out between August and October 2002 on this sector in a Mexican locality. A classification of the firms in terms of their technological and managerial capabilities was carried out by means of two multivariate statistical methods: multiple correspondence analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis. Then, a comparison of the capabilities of these firms in each cluster is carried out, differentiating between those firms whose owners have had previous work experience in the maquila industry from those that have not. The evidence shows an heterogeneous sector, grouped in 6 different clusters according to the technological and managerial capabilities of the firms. A positive relationship was found between the previous experience of the SMEs’ owners in the maquilas, and between the specific job position occupied by the firms’ owners, and the technological and managerial capabilities of the firms. The owners that occupied managerial job positions seem to have acquired technical and managerial skills that are required for their new firms.

Virtues and limits of competitive funds to finance research and innovation: The case of Mexican agriculture

Competitive funds (CF) have become a preferred mechanism to allocate research funding, particularly in developing countries, to the point that they are the most important (and often unique) source of funds. Most analysis of CF assumes that they are an efficient instrument to allocate research funds, without realizing that other allocation mechanisms are available. The funding agency only has limited knowledge about the effectiveness of CF. This paper reviews the experience of the Mexican Produce Foundations with CF in the agriculture sector and discusses some benefits and limits of using CF as the main mechanism to fund research in a country with a relatively weak national innovation system, a relatively small research system, and some very innovative actors in the agricultural system. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

What are the university–productive sector links that matter in a small island country? The case of Cabo Verde

There is extensive literature on university–firm links but it is mostly based on empirical evidence from advanced countries, emerging economies and developing countries that already have certain capabilities of the public research system and an important set of mature firms (of different sizes and even some exporters). This explains the use of a set of channels of interactions based on knowledge generation activities. In the case of African countries, the two agents that interact have specific characteristics, which affect the bases of their interactions. This paper explores the channels of interactions between university and the productive sector (not only firms) in the context of a small country such as Cabo Verde, and elaborates policy implications in terms of a sequential path of evolution of the channels from the existing interaction based on the formation of human resources to one that is more knowledge based.

Coevolution of science and technology and innovation: a three stage model of policies based on the Mexican case

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the coevolution between two arenas, on one side the Science and Technology (S&T)1, and on the other the Innovation (Innov), from a developing countrys perspective. It argues that in the context of the knowledge economy, the coevolution of these arenas is crucial for this type of countries to transit to a development process. The discovery that some Japanese firms as well as firms from Korea and other newly industrializing countries could compete successfully with their United States counterparts contributed to focus the attention of scholars and policy makers on the conditions of a successful catching up process. From the 1980s there has been a sudden increase of books and papers focusing on the function of science, technology and innovation (STI), and on their interrelations, for the development processes.

The Significance of Jorge Katz’s Work for the Understanding of Learning and Technological Capability Building in Developing Countries

At the beginning of the 1970s Jorge Katz wrote “Importation de tecnologia, aprendizaje e industrializacion dependiente” (“Technology Imports, Local Learning and Dependent Industrialization”) (1971 and 1976), originally published in January of 1971 by the Instituto Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires, and his final version in 1976 by Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico. This book represented a great contribution to thinking about the economics of technical change as soon as it gave rise to a new way of perceiving technical change in developing countries.

Do linkages between farmers and academic researchers influence research productivity? Evidence from Mexico

We explore the effect of linkages between farmers and academic researchers on research productivity in fields related to agriculture. We found a positive and significant relationship between intensive linkages with a few farmers and research productivity, when this is defined as publications in ISI journals. This evidence contradicts other contributions that argue that strong ties with businesses reduce research productivity and distort the original purposes of university. When research productivity is defined more broadly adding other types of research outputs, the relationship is also positive and significant, confirming the argument that close ties between public research institutions and businesses foster the emergence of new ideas that can result in valuable innovations. Another finding is that researchers in public institutions produce several types of research outputs; therefore, measuring research productivity only by published ISI papers misses important dimensions of research activities.