This group continues the work carried out by the IECON’s Development Area between 2010 and 2012. The group studies the role of institutions in development, conceived –both descriptively and normatively- as a multidimensional process. A broad perspective is taken on their origin and foundations, as well as in regard to which institutions have an impact on development, and how. In particular, institutions are seen as regularized patterns of social behavior and interaction. Our approach assumes that institutions in existence at a particular moment are the result of the coevolution of different “regularized patterns”, and are influenced by the actors involved in relation to their relative power. It is not enough to simply identify the partial effects of institutions on certain indicators of economic performance; the way in which specific constellations of institutions direct the behavior of agents in performing essential economic functions must be analyzed. The group’s primary research agenda is to elucidate the concrete causal mechanisms that connect institutional arrangements and performance. We apply this perspective primarily (although not exclusively) to the problems of capital accumulation, savings and innovation. We produce empirically based knowledge and aspire to engage with the relevant international professional community on theoretical matters. Our focus is on development issues in countries like Uruguay. However, countries of greater, as well as lesser, levels of productive sophistication are not ignored, and are taken as reference points from which to better understand the Uruguayan reality and as points of entry into the international discourse regarding development.
Brokers play a critical role in the evolution of innovation systems by accessing and diffusing external knowledge. However, while brokers’ activity allows benefits for the entire system, it entails costs for those who play the broker role. Using patent data to analyse inter-city networks in Latin America, we identify broker cities and estimate the effects of brokerage on patenting outcomes between 2006 and 2017. Our findings reveal that cities holding a central position in the network show higher patenting activity; however, being a broker, particularly connecting Latin American cities with the rest of the world, negatively influences patenting outcomes.
This paper analyzes international collaboration networks associated with invention and patenting in Latin America between 1970 and 2017. We use data from US patent records retrieved from the Patents View platform. We select patents with actors located in Latin American countries and create networks where nodes are countries and links represent collaboration among inventors and among patent owners located in different countries. We apply various social network analysis methods...
Abstract:
This study develops an agent-based model which seeks to analyse the innovation network of an economic sector that is intensive in highly trained human resources. This sector is composed by agents that face a restriction to the incorporation of new capital, and have the possibility to choose the proportion of its available capital devoted to each of the two available goods. These agents have a menu of three strategies to seek to innovate, and thus increase their productivity. The adjustment of these strategies is done endogenously and results in a process that determines the structure of the innovation network. The consideration of public policies in the system leads to the conclusion that the effect of policies depends heavily on the specific population to which they are directed. These results are manifested both in the performance of the system and in the network structure that emerges from the evolution of the model.