Trade and the Accumulation and Diffusion of Knowledge

November 1996 The accumulation of knowledge affects trade performance and competitiveness, but trade also (through imports) affects the accumulation of knowledge. Padoan examines the properties of a dynamic disequilibrium model focused on trade specialization and the accumulation of knowledge. He uses a sector breakdown (four export and two import sectors) following Pavitt's (1984) taxonomy, which is especially appropriate for empirically analyzing the relationship between innovation activities and production and export performance. Steady-state analysis shows that: ° Under perfectly balanced growth (no change in trade specialization and a uniform growth of knowledge), international diffusion of knowledge is irrelevant for growth. ° Under unbalanced growth (with changes in the structure of specialization), the process of structural change may be enhanced by the effects on the domestic accumulation of knowledge of domestic spillover, as innovation activities in one sector generate positive externalities on the rest of the economy. The growth of foreign knowledge has an ambivalent effect on domestic performance because it is both a complement to, and a substitute for, domestic knowledge. Whenever these two effects do not perfectly match, the diffusion of international knowledge is associated with unbalanced growth. Imports of knowledge-intensive goods may not lead to higher growth unless there is sufficiently strong trade performance in the knowledge-intensive sectors (that is, there are thresholds in expansion of market share). This result, whose implications for developing countries is relevant, is not usually reported in the literature in which greater accumulation of foreign knowledge unambiguously leads to higher growth in the country that imports technology through trade. Unbalanced growth is also associated with output catching up. Technological catchi...