Abstract
A significant structural change in the pattern of economic development in Asian economies has been observed in recent years. We have seen many cases in which the Asian economies became the center of the world-wide production in an extremely short period of time after a new product entered the market. Also in the science, the number of papers written by Asian researchers has been increasing dramatically. In this situation, the existing studies cannot sufficiently explain the driving force and the mechanism of catch-up or economic growth. Therefore, it is now required to model this new type of economic development. In this paper we analyzed their scientific catch-up status using scientific papers on solar cells to clarify the structural change. After mid 1990s, knowledge creation has been accelerated in the field of solar cell. Now more than three thousand papers are published annually. We found as a result that the catch-up process in Asian economies had progressed rapidly, that some economies had a larger share of scientific papers in the frontier field of advanced science than in the matured fields, and that the strategy largely changed from area to area. A “parallel-running-type growth model” has thus been emerging in Asia. Responding to the significant changes in development model, we have to re-design the framework of economic cooperation. There is a need for further horizontal collaboration among major Asian economies and developed economies. We also showed that bibliometrics is an effective method for presuming a detailed national strategy that is not known to the outside.
Highlights
In fields such as development economics, political science, and innovation research, many studies have been conducted on the process in which the developing economies catch up with the advanced economies and on the convergence of the disparity
We found as a result that the catch-up process in Asian economies had progressed rapidly, that some economies had a larger share of scientific papers in the frontier field of advanced science than in the matured fields, and that the strategy largely changed from area to area
Without computer-based approach, it is very hard to know the meta structure as well as structural changes of knowledge related to solar cell
Summary
In fields such as development economics, political science, and innovation research, many studies have been conducted on the process in which the developing economies catch up with the advanced economies and on the convergence of the disparity. The number of papers written by Chinese or Indians has been increasing dramatically and the structure of the geographical distribution of scientific knowledge is significantly changing [12]. In this situation, the existing studies cannot sufficiently explain the driving force and the mechanism of catch-up or economic growth. We will discuss the differences among the economies and the causes for the differences
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