The Generation of Domestic Technological Capabilities: Measuring the Impact of the Contributions of Jorge Katz

Abstract

At the end of the 1960s economic thinking in Latin America was dominated by the neoclassical micro world in its most stylized way. As Katz (1987) clearly stated, the paradigm behind the technological behaviour of firms was associated with a representative agent that took decisions based on free technical information. Under these assumptions, there was no space for exploring the technological problem, which was simply assumed. In addition, the diffusion of technical knowledge at an international level was related to the acquisition of a technological package generated in developed economies. In this context, the prevailing idea was that Latin American firms were passive recipients of technology, so that the transfer of technology involved unidirectional flows of knowledge from external sources to the firms.