Productive Development Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Case of Mexico

While Mexico has potential to grow rapidly, its economic growth has remained low for the past three decades. There is no consensus on the countrys development path or on how to achieve specific goals. Since the policy debate remains ideological and lacks pragmatism, productive development policies (PDPs) are often uncoordinated, redundant or even incongruent with each other. It is therefore important to understand the process whereby PDPs are designed and the institutional setting in which they are are implemented. This paper consequently examines whether PDPs respond to market failures and/or government failures. When PDPs are not designed to address specific market failures they can produce unwanted results or prove completely ineffective. When PDPs do address government failures, it is important to determine the reasons why the failure cannot be corrected in the first place and whether PDPs will be effective at addressing the problem in a second-best manner

Innovation policies in Thailand: towards a system of innovation approach?

The issue of the rationale for public intervention under the system of innovation (SI) perspective has recently received increasing attention from scholars and practitioners. However, with few exceptions, this literature has been based on the analysis of innovation policies and innovation systems in industrialized countries neglecting almost completely the specific policy dilemmas that arise from the weak and fragmented innovation systems that characterize developing countries. In the last few years, a growing number of developing countries have adopted the SI approach officially in their innovation policy. Yet, there has not been an adequate attempt to systematically analyze how (and if) this has been done in practice. This study attempts to shed some light on this issue by analyzing the innovation policy of Thailand. It suggests that while the innovation system approach might be officially adopted by a government, the practice follows old innovation paradigms and hardly addresses systemic problems

Innovation policies in Thailand: towards a system of innovation approach?

The issue of the rationale for public intervention under the system of innovation (SI) perspective has recently received increasing attention from scholars and practitioners. However, with few exceptions, this literature has been based on the analysis of innovation policies and innovation systems in industrialized countries neglecting almost completely the specific policy dilemmas that arise from the weak and fragmented innovation systems that characterize developing countries. In the last few years, a growing number of developing countries have adopted the SI approach officially in their innovation policy. Yet, there has not been an adequate attempt to systematically analyze how (and if) this has been done in practice. This study attempts to shed some light on this issue by analyzing the innovation policy of Thailand. It suggests that while the innovation system approach might be officially adopted by a government, the practice follows old innovation paradigms and hardly addresses systemic problems