Martín Puchet

The Changing Role of Science, Technology and Innovation Policy in Building Systems of Innovation: The Case of Mexico

Latin American countries still account for most of the world’s social challenges: extreme poverty, malnutrition, high infant mortality, low life expectancy and a decline in schooling quality indicators. For many countries, Mexico included, a number of these problems can be traced to income inequality, a low-qualified workforce, increasing presence of informal sectors and the dominance of economic structures heavily dependent on low-intensive technological sectors. Limited investment in science, technology and innovation (STI) also remains a salient feature of these economies. In this regard, a growing stream of literature has drawn attention for linking STI to broader economic and developmental agendas (Kraemer-Mbula and Wamae in Innovation and the Development Agenda, OECD, Paris, p. 152, 2010; Gault, Innovation Strategies for a Global Economy, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, p. 232, 2010; STEPS, Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto, The STEPS Centre, Brighton, p. 24, 2010). In many instances, the bid is for the review and renewal of the relationship between STI activities and the overall social and economic dynamics of countries (Azzazy, Science, 333(6040):278–284, 2011; Cozzens and Sutz, Innovation in Informal Settings: A Research Agenda, p. 53, 2012). From the National Innovation System (NIS) perspective (Freeman 1987; Lundvall 1992, 2003; Nelson 1993; Edquist 1997, 2006), STI policy has been crucial as a means for development and consolidation of NIS’s agents both in academia and the productive sector, as well as in incentivizing a dynamic interaction between them. Likewise, important for STI policy is to promote and sustain the creation, dissemination and use of knowledge as an interactive, self-reinforcing mechanism guiding the generation of STI capacities, the operation of and governance of the STI system and its correspondence with the dynamics of social and economic systems. Public policy in general and STI policy in particular shape and reshape the institutional framework in which the system’s agents perform, and at the same time, the institutional framework sets some boundaries to the unfolding of public intervention. This chapter analyses how public policies have contributed, or not, to the building and nurturing the Mexican System of Innovation, and how the emergent system feedbacks the design, tailoring and implementation of STI policies in Mexico. We also consider the institutional environment in which the NIS performs, the mechanisms governing public funding, as well as the configuration of the policy mix, as a fundamental part of the public action that seeks to influence the social and economic dynamics of the country. The analysis is focused on how the policies, the system and the institutional environment have co-evolved since the 1940s.

Economic growth, innovation and inequality in Latin America: improvements, setbacks and pending issues post-Washington Consensus

The book has a strong theoretical foundation with empirical illustrations from diverse Latin American countries. As a whole, it offers a comprehensive exploration of the foundations of the theory of National Innovation Systems. The authors explore the particular problems that many Latin American countries have faced when trying to build innovation systems associated with development strategies, particularly those that take into account social inclusion.

Singularities, Walrasian Economies and Economic Crisis

We consider pure exchange economies whose consumption spaces are Banach lattices. The utility functions are strictly concave, Gateaux differentiable, and not necessarily separable. Following the Negishi approach and using the excess utility function, we introduce a notion of social equilibria. We show that there exists a bijective correspondence between this set and the set of Walrasian equilibria. By transforming the problem of finding the Walrasian equilibria into an equivalent problem of finding social equilibria, we can use techniques of smooth functional analysis to show that a suitable large subset of economies are regular and its equilibrium set is a Banach manifold. Finally, we focus on the complement of this set, i.e. the set of singular economies, and we analyze its main characteristics, among them, those that are the causes of economic crises.

Tensions of science, technology and innovation policy in Mexico: analytical models, institutional evolution, national capabilities and governance

The analytical framework used for science, technology and innovation (STI) public policy design worldwide is largely based on a systemic/evolutionary approach and, empirically, it is based on countries with specific initial conditions – the central economies and some successful Asian economies. These countries have specific trajectories of institutional building, political culture and STI capabilities, which shape their national innovation systems (NIS). A central issue in understanding the trajectories and the chances of success or failure of policies emanating from these models, and variants that aim to adapt to developing economies, is to analytically conceive the role of the institutional framework, the rules of the game in operation in the system, the governance at national, sectoral and regional levels, and some aspects of the political economy in the recipients’ countries. These affect the STI practice and policy, contribute to feeding tensions that militate against the building of a sustainable NIS, and are country specific. The aim of this chapter is to discuss the experience of STI policy making in Mexico, considering the international model and the interaction between the trajectory of institutional building, the process of construction of both the government and the governance of the NSI, and the political economy. This chapter argues that a set of rules and actions are formed and built from the STI practice; they allow or block actions in governance processes. The data used to inform our arguments are based on the STI laws and regulations, transcripts of board meetings and interviews with key agents of the NSI.