On The Diffusion Of Knowledge And Of Foreign Trade And Competitive Advantage

With the growing of the knowledge economy, knowledge becomes more and more important in modem society. Some economists hold the idea that one nation抯 knowledge level determines its economic development performance. The knowledge level differs widely among nations. According to the World Bank Report 1999, the difference in knowledge is much larger than that in income per capita between developed and developing countries. Many scholars have begun to study how to improve one nation抯 knowledge level and how to shorten the knowledge gap between developed and developing countries. Many researches have shown that there are two ways to increase knowledge stock and improve knowledge level. The first way is knowledge production itself, and the second way is knowledge absorption from other situations. The nature of developing countries, such as less-developed economy, the lack of human capital and poor knowledge stock, indicate that they are too weak in knowledge production and have to depend mainly on knowledge absorption from other nations. Thus the research of international knowledge diffusion is a very important issue in the theory of international trade. Many studies have been conducted to address the issue of knowledge diffusion, but few of them have combined knowledge diffusion with foreign trade competitive advantage, while competitive advantage is the foundation of the theory of international trade. This dissertation tries to study the relationship between knowledge diffusion and foreign trade competitive advantage, and to give some suggestions on speeding up knowledge diffusion to promote foreign trade competitive advantage of our nation. In 1998 and 1999, China抯 export goods ranked No. 9 in the world, and the share in the world抯 export reached 3.5% in 1999. It implies that China has played an important role in the international trade and has become a big trade country. But China抯 export goods are not very competitive in the world because the market share of China抯 export is rather small and we mostly export low value-added goods. In the view of the TC index, RCA index and term of trade which imply the international competitive advantage of one country抯 foreign trade, China is not a powerful nation yet. Thus, the study of China抯 transition from a 揵ig trade country?to a 損owerful trade countiy?becomes a historic topic of sustained and healthy development of foreign trade under new circumstances. This dissertation is focused on how to improve our foreign trade competitive advantage from the perspective of accelerating knowledge diffusion. This dissertation contains two parts. The first part discusses the theoretical relationship between knowledge diffusion and international trade competitive advantage and the mechanism in which knowledge diffusion affects international trade competitive advantage. The second part empirically studies some countries?experience and our nation抯 lessons in the past. Finally this thesis gives some advice on how to promote China抯 export competitive advantage. The contents of the dissertation are as follow: In Introduction, the academic and realistic background of the thesis is described, and some terminologies are well defined. Chapter One focuses its attention on the basic theories of knowledge diffusion. Firstly the thesis analyzes the Mansfield model and Baeyes model. Secondly the paper makes a comprehensive study...