Technology transfer & restrictive trade practices : a microeconomic study of the Indian electronic industry (original) (raw)
Trade and Technology Transfer in India
World Focus, 2024
This paper examines the connections between trade and technology, asserting that technology transfer may be a natural aspect of trade. However, the relevance of technology transfer has diminished as trade patterns evolve, becoming outdated and impractical. The paper contends that the rise of trade within integrated value chains has lessened the feasibility of technology transfer. Moreover, the lack of technology transfer provisions in new trade agreements fosters the dependency of less developed countries on advanced economies. Consequently, this paper advocates for a clear stipulation for technology transfer in India’s trade agreements. This is particularly crucial for India, which faces the Leontief Paradox: it exports capital-intensive and technologically advanced goods despite being a labour-rich economy. The paper also posits that geopolitical dynamics and economic interests have been more influential than political ideologies in forming the trade policies of nations.
Recent Technology Imports into India: Results of a Survey
Development and Change, 1990
This paper analyses the results of a survey of twenty-four recent cases of technology imports into India. Over the last thirty years, large firms in Indian industry have come under increasing competitive pressure from small firms which pay lower wages and which are also favoured by government policy. Most small firms obtain technology through informal channels within the country. But some import technology; and larger firms import it in their defence against competition from small firms. Larger firms, with a history and a reputation, have better access to technology from abroad; smallcr firms often go through an extensive search before they find a willing technology supplier. Irrespective of size, firms that import technology within their own specialization are observed to put more effort into technology choice, absorption and adaptation. Indian policies of across-the-board import substitution, by promoting diversification into new products developed abroad, tend to discourage specialization and hence to encourage technology imports and to work against technology absorption and innovation.
Labor productivity, trade and R&D in the Electronics industry
2014
There is a rising concern in the recent times regarding the growth of Indian manufacturing sector and the sources of productivity growth. Recent trends indicate that growth is highly import intensive while both total and partial factor productivity growth is concentrated only in few subsectors. Using the prowess database from 2002-2012, the paper analyses the impact of trade and research and development on labor productivity in the Indian electronics industry. The paper finds that trade and R&D per se do not contribute to labor productivity, however, the joint impact of both these variables is positive and significant, suggesting strong complementarities between internal R&D and technology transfer in the Indian electronics industry.
2015
China and India have one of the largest telecommunications equipment markets in the world. The paper employs a sectoral system of innovation framework towards understanding the differential outcomes in innovation capability building in the industry achieved by China and India. The countries have pursued widely diverging strategies for developing their domestic innovation capability. India followed a very rigid policy of indigenous development of domestic technologies by establishing a stand-alone public laboratory that developed state-of-the-art switching technologies. These were then transferred to manufacturing enterprises in both public and private sectors. The enterprises themselves did not have any in-house R&D capability. The public laboratory was also not given any strategic direction, even though it was technologically speaking, very competent. Consequently the country, despite possessing good quality human resource was unable to keep pace with changes in the technology fron...
Transfer of Technology: Competition or Cooperation
2002
Looking at an economy as consisting of several layers of techniques gives us a way to spell out the implications of macroeconomic situations to micro levels. For instance, if macroeconomic consideration point to reducing total employment, a map of the layers of techniques of the economy should be able to pinpoint the firms of different regions that are likely to
2007
This entry discusses the transfer of technological knowledge. The primary focus is on technology transfer between firms in different countries. Asymmetric information often makes arms-length transactions of technology infeasible. Instead, international technology transfer tends to occur through non-market channels. For example, technology externalities provided by the US to other countries are an order of magnitude larger than US technology licensing receipts. 1 These externalities are called technology spillovers.
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2000
1 It may be noted that contrary to popular perceptions, the new framework does not provide an unambiguous theoretical underpinning to the notion that opening to trade increases the incentives of less developed country (LDC) firms to invest in innovations (see for example, Rodrik 1992, Young 1991). 2 There are a number of other channels as well. For example, case study evidence suggests that export activities by firms in LDCs lead to improvements in their technical efficiency as international buyers transmit technical assistance and knowledge to them. While a number of econometric studies purport to show the same, see Clerides, Lach, and Tybout (1996) for a critique of these studies. Spillovers of international knowledge represent yet another mechanism of drawing upon the international knowledge base. In principle, such spillovers do not have to be related to trade. In practice, however, even these are likely to depend on trade (Coe and Helpman, 1995). 3 For example, case studies by Scott-Kemmis and Bell (1988) and Desai (1988) examining the contractual purchase of foreign technology by Indian firms suggest that the importing Indian firms do not get enough technological know-how through the contracts. Although this evidence has been interpreted differently by various researchers, many have taken the case study evidence to be indicative of low returns from the import of technology. Indeed, even Arora (1996) who clearly believes technology transfer to be a potentially important source of technology and focuses on policies that would improve the efficiency of technology transfer is prompted to write that the "ability of Indian firms [engaged in arm's length import of technology] to assimilate, utilize, and improve