How Nations Learn Technological Learning, Industrial Policy, and Catch-up

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. What are the prospects for successful learning and catch-up for nations in the twenty-first century? Why have some nations succeeded while others failed? The World Bank states that out of over one hundred middle-income economies in 1960, only thirteen became high income by 2008. How Nations Learn: Technological Learning, Industrial Policy, and Catch-up examines how nations learn by reviewing key structural and contingent factors that contribute to dynamic learning and catch-up. Rejecting both the 'one-size-fits-all' approach and the agnosticism that all nations are unique and different, it uses historical as well as firm-, industry-, and country-level evidence and experiences to identify the sources and drivers of successful learning and catch-up and the lessons for late-latecomer countries. Authored by eminent scholars, the volume aims to generate interest and debate among policy makers, practitioners, and researchers on the complexity of learning and catch-up. It explores technological learning at the firm level, policy learning by the state, and the cumulative and multifaceted nature of the learning process, which encompasses learning by doing, by experiment, emulation, innovation, and leapfrogging.

1 - Technological Learning, Industrial Policy, and Catch-up: Introduction
2 - Catch-up and Constraints in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
3 - Learning from East Asia: Catch-up and the Making of China's Developmental State
4 - Catch-up and Mission-Oriented Innovation
5 - Meiji Japan: Progressive Learning of Western Technology
6 - Catch-up and Learning in Taiwan: The Role of Industrial Policy
7 - The Origin of Absorptive Capacity in Korea: How Korean Industry Learnt
8 - China: Learning To Catch-up in a Globalized World
9 - Learning and Catch-up in Singapore : Lessons for Developing Countries
10 - Catch-up and Learning in Latin America
11 - Technological Learning in Africa: Catch-up in the Aviation Industry
12 - Learning to Catch-up in South-East Asia
13 - Learning to Catch-up in Africa
14 - How Nations Learn: Implications for Latecomers and Pathways to the Future

Arkebe Oqubay is a Senior Minister and Special Adviser to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia and has been at the centre of policymaking for over twenty-five years. He is a research associate at the Centre of African Studies in the University of London, and holds a PhD in development studies from SOAS, University of London. He is the former mayor of Addis Ababa and winner of the ABN Best African Mayor of 2006, and finalist for the World Mayor Award 2006. He is a recipient of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star and serves as board chair of several leading public organizations and international advisory boards. His work includes Made in Africa: Industrial Policy in Ethiopia (OUP, 2015); African Economic Development: Evidence, Theory, and Policy (OUP, 2019); and China-Africa and an Economic Transformation (2019, OUP). He was recognized as one of the 100 Most Influential Africans of 2016, and a 'leading thinker on Africa's strategic development' by the New African. Kenichi Ohno is a Professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo. He has previously worked at the International Monetary Fund and taught at the University of Tsukuba and Saitama University. He works closely with the Japanese government in designing international cooperation strategy. He has advised the Vietnamese government since 1995 and has done policy research in over twenty countries in Asia and Africa focusing on industrialization, policy learning for catch-up, the development experiences of Japan latecomers, and international comparison of industrial policy quality. His books include The History of Japanese Economic Development (Routledge, 2018), Learning to Industrialize (Routledge, 2013), and Eastern and Western Ideas for African Growth (Routledge, 2013). He received the Presidential Medal for Friendship from the Vietnamese government and the Japanese Foreign Minister Award for contributing to Japan-Vietnam economic relationship.