The Factor Endowments, The Technical Capability And The Technical Catching Up Of The Developing Economy

The technical catching up is the key for the developing countries or regions to catch up the developed countries or regions. Is it feasible to implement technology catching up to shrink the economic and technical gap between the developed countries and the developing countries, or even to surpass the developed countries? Scholars have various interpretations on this question, and the practical results are different. In other words, what is fundamental reason of the technical catching up for the developing countries, what is the mechanisms, and how to implement the technical catching up, the in-depth study on the issues has become a core element for the development economics.From the existing theories, we can see that the technology innovation is the key to narrow the technology gap and implement the technology catching up. But technology of the developed countries is adapting their factor endowments and the technological ability, which may not be appropriate for the developing countries because they lack the needed organization, the technological base, the human capital and other factor endowments and technology capacity as developed countries do. Based on this, our research shows that technology capability is the key to the technology catching up, meanwhile technology capacity of the economy is determined by the factor endowments. The traditional factor endowments theory focuses on the comparison of the quantity of the factors and ignores the quality dimension of the factors, this dissertation expands the factor endowment theory and suggests the factors are determined by both the quantity and the quality dimension. It studies the internal mechanism between the factor endowments and the technology capacity and analyzes the processes and ways of catching up determined by the factor endowments and the technology capacity, therefore, it can provide the theoretical and methodological support for the developing countries.Technology gap between the developed countries and developing countries is both a challenge and an opportunity for the latter, especially the presence of the back advantages of the developing countries (regions) makes it possible to narrow the technology gap and realize the technology catching up through technology innovation. Although the technology catching up is facing the difficulty of "comparative advantage trap" and the conversion from backward advantage to disadvantage, it can still be implemented through cultivating the factor endowments and upgrading the technology ability.The factor endowments are the core of the technology capacity and the basis of the technology catching up. Utilizing the technology innovation framework built by Robert J. Barro and Xavier Sala-I-Martin and GM Grossman and E. Helpman, this paper elaborates the mechanism of the technology catching up from both quantity and quality dimensions using intermediate products as a carrier. The results further strengthen the paper's first important conclusion: the factor endowments determine the technology capacity, and both the factor endowments and the technology ability jointly determine the ability and the level of the technology catching up.The factor endowments are the basis of the technology catching-up, and the technology capacity is the key to the technology catching-up. In order to illustrate the essence, content, and source of the technology ability and to analyze the corresponding relationship between the technology ability and three ways of the technology catching up, this paper analyzes that the dynamic evolution of the technology ability which determines the dynamic evolution of the technology catching-up, which leads to the second important conclusion: the imitative innovation should be adopted when the technical parameters are low; the cooperative innovation should be adopted when the technology parameters rise to a certain degree; the independent innovation can be implemented only when the technical capacity increases to a higher level.The factor endowments and technological ability are unified, which are combined together for the technology catching-up. The paper analyzes the conduction mechanism of the factor endowments which promotes the technology upgrading and technology catching up, and further elaborates the mechanism of the factor endowments, the technology capacity, and the technology catching up. In order to verify the theory in this paper and test the effect of the factor endowments and the technology capabilities in Chinese provinces, the paper refines the index system of the factor endowment and the technology capacity and estimates the threshold effect of the technology ability, therefore we draw draws the third important conclusion: there is a threshold effect of the technology capacity in China's regional technology catching up, Tibet, Yunnan, Guizhou, Hainan, Qinghai, Gansu and Ningxia provinces have not crossed the technology capacity threshold, these regions should take the imitate innovation to catch up, and the others provinces have already crossed the threshold of the technology capacity, thus can adopt high-level model, for example, the independent or the cooperation innovation to catch up and surpass.The world economic development process is actually a catching-up process continuously through the factor endowments and the technology capabilities for the backward countries and regions. In order to scientifically study the international technology catching-up experience from the factor endowments and the technology capacity and to put forward China's technology strategy, this paper inspects Japan and South Korea's catching-up with the developed countries and proves the three important conclusions of this paper from the history of economic development. It then provides some suggestions and strategies to nurture the factor endowments and enhance the technical capacity to provide practical and workable recommendations and strategies for China's catching up based on its actual situation.