The Ends and the Means of Development

The best innovation capacity in Latin America With a rank of 29 among the 131 countries included in the ICI, Chile is by far the best performing country in Latin America. Indeed, it has a rank a full 20 places ahead of Uruguay (49), the next best performer. Chile is firmly positioned among 12 members of the European Union, with some slightly ahead (e.g., Belgium, Austria, France, and Spain), and others slightly behind (Italy, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Portugal). Chile has the highest rank among countries with a broadly similar level of income per capita, with only Malaysia (34) exhibiting a similar performance. Chile has a rank of 1 in Latin America in several important indicators including government effectiveness, rule of law, absence of corruption, the fiscal balance (as a proxy indicator for the strength of macroeconomic policies), the number of schools connected to the Internet, the ease of paying taxes, broadband penetration rates, reliability of electricity generation, a...

Korea is ranked 11 in the 2010 edition of the Innovation Capacity Index, because it does extremely well in many of the areas captured by the Index. Let us begin by highlighting a few facts about Korea’s innovation capacity. First, the information and communications technology industry is a powerful engine of economic growth, contributing over 40 percent to the total expansion of GDP growth in recent years. Second, expenditure on research and development in relation to GDP has risen from under 1 percent in the 1980s to close to 3.5 percent in 2009, well above the OECD average. Third, the share of R&D expenditure carried out by the private sector had risen from 29 percent in 1970 to over 70 percent by 2000. Fourth, the average number of patents granted in the United States to Korean firms rose from about 10 per year during the period 1963–1986 to an average of about 4,800 per year during the period 2002–2007, a close to 500-fold increase. Fifth, the share of ICT in total manufacturin...