Technology, foreign-owned firms and competitiveness in the middle-income countries
Some economies inside the diverse group of middle-income countries (MIC) have shown an active behavior in exports of technology-intensive goods that is strictly better than the group average. Among the factors explaining such a behavior we find the national technological capabilities that affect the dynamism of their productive and trade structure generating competitiveness gains. Another element is the potential impact that foreign direct investments (FDI) flows generate in those economies since foreign owned firms have contributed to the industrialization and modernization of their productive systems. In this paper we show a descriptive analysis of those competitive factors through the Global Competitiveness Index from the World Economic Forum and the Enterprise Surveys form the World Bank, with the aim of highlighting the relative importance of them and the differences across middle-income economies.
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