1、 1 本科毕业论文外文翻译 外文题目： Exports of High Technology Products from Developing Countries: Is it Real or a Statistical Artifact 出 处： 2000 UNU/INTECH, Discussion Papers 作 者： Sunil Mani 原 文： Exports of High Technology Products from Developing Countries: Is it Real or a Statistical Artifact Sunil Mani (May 200
2、0) ABSTRACT This paper first develops a consistent time-series data on the exports of high technology products from essentially the developing countries. An analysis of the data shows that developing countries are increasingly becoming exporters of manufactured products as against primary products i
3、n the past. Second the world trade is increasingly becoming a trade in high-tech products. What is more striking is the significant increase of the technology content of exports by developing countries: very nearly a quarter of the exports from developing countries is now in high tech products. Thir
4、d, the share of developing countries in high tech exports have shown dramatic increases: it has increased from about 8 per cent in 1988 to about 23 per cent by 1997. But there is considerable concentration of it in a few countries. The paper then seeks to explain whether these developing countries a
5、re real exporters of high tech products or not. This is accomplished by a careful examination of the degree of product specialisation by both developed and developing countries, by examining their record with respect to patenting and finally by analysing certain indicators of high tech competitivene
6、ss. The paper concludes by presenting a case study of a leading high tech exporter from the developing world. 1.Definition of High Technology Economists have been attempting to measure the technology content of world trade. This is accomplished in terms of the technology embodied in products that ar
7、e exported from a country. Admittedly it is a difficult exercise and no method is foolproof and perfect. The greatest difficulty is in classifying products according to the technology content embodied in it. Several attempts in this direction have been made in the past. In the following I undertake
8、a quick review of the methodologies. This is essential, as I will attempt to show that depending on the definition of high technology that is employed, it is possible to get significantly different results. The first systematic effort in this direction was by Davis (1982). He defined high technology
9、 manufactures 2 as those manufactured products that have the highest embodied R&D spending relative to the value of shipments to illustrate the term embodied R&D means an aircraft gets credit for the R&D spent by computer industry which supplied the avionics, as well as R&D of the industry supplying
10、 the tyres. Davis used input-output techniques to determine how much of the value of R&D embodied in the intermediate products should be included as an indirect addition to the R&D spent directly to produce the final product. Total R&D was thus a sum of both direct and indirect R&D. Arranging the pr
11、oduct groups in order from the highest in technology intensity to the lowest, Davis designated the top ten as high technology. The product with the tenth highest level of technology intensity was thirty per cent higher than that of the eleventh product and more than double the average of all manufac
12、tures. The Davis definition was based on the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) of the US Department of Commerce and as such as this definition could not be applied to international data as it is classified according to the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC). Hatter (1985) has
13、overcome this problem by mapping out a concordance between the SIC and SITC. This concordance was constructed on the basis of SITC revision 1. World Bank (1999) have applied this definition to the UN Comtrade dataset and has arrived at a series of high technology exports at the aggregate level for o
14、ver seventy developed and developing countries during the period 1962-1997. Nevertheless there are two major limitations with the definition (Davis-Hatter) and the dataset (World Bank). First the definitions being applied to a rather aggregate classification such as the SITC Rev.1 is likely to overe
15、stimate the extent of high technology exports by any country. Second, one cannot apply retrospectively a definition based on estimates of embodied R&D in 1980s to say the 1960s because many of the items that were considered to be “high-tech” in the 1960s are unlikely to be considered “high-tech” in
16、the 1980s. More on these points later. The second definition of high technology is by Hatzichronoglou (1997). According to him a list of high technology products corresponding to the three-digit SITC Revision 3 classification was prepared. This list was, “the outcome of calculations concerning R&D i
17、ntensity (R&D expenditure/total sales) covering six countries (the US, Japan, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands). The number of countries covered is of no great importance since national considerations have no bearing on whether a product is classified as high-tech or not. The OECD definition
18、(by Hatzichronoglou) appears to be better than the previous attempts because the products are straight away defined as high tech according to their SITC classification and thus obviating the need for any concordance tables. 2.MAIN FEATURES OF HIGH TECHNOLOGY EXPORTS 2. 1 Concentration of High Tech E
19、xports There is considerable concentration of high tech exports within both the developed and developing countries. Approximately three quarters of the total exports of high tech products in the world are contributed by just ten countries, of which five are developing. Two such rankings are possible
20、.First in terms of the absolute value of exports and second in terms of the relative share of high tech exports in the exports of manufactures from each country (developed and developing as well). The second one is more of a ranking in terms of the high tech export intensity. If one uses the first i
21、ndicator, the following picture emerges (Table 7).If one uses the second indicator, namely the relative share of high tech exports and rank 3 all the countries according to their high tech export intensity, and then the ranking is entirely different. (Table 8). Table 7 Concentration in Exports of Hi
22、gh Tech Products (Based on absolute values) Share of the top 10 high-tech exporting countries(in per cent) Concentration Within Each Category (in per cent) Share of top 5 developed countries Share of top 5 developing countries 1988 68 66 87 1989 77 76 87 1990 75 74 86 1991 78 78 82 1992 78 76 85 199
23、3 77 76 86 1994 77 75 86 1995 76 73 87 1996 74 72 82 1997 75 72 85 1998 77 72 95 Note: * The top 5 developed countries are the US, Japan, Germany, UK and France and the top 5 developing countries are Singapore, Korea, Malaysia, China and Mexico. Source: INTECH (2000) Table 8 Ranking of Developed and
24、 Developing Countries according to High Tech Export Intensity developed countries developing countries rank name Average Export Intensity* rank name Average Export Intensity* 1 Ireland 42.82 1 Singapore 49.78 2 USA 31.9 2 Malaysia 43.13 3 Japan 25.11 3 Philippines 38.33 4 UK 24.96 4 Thailand 22.79 5
25、 Netherlands 21.71 5 Korea 21.62 Notes: * Average during the period 1988-98 * Malta, which has an average export intensity of 55.72 per cent, is the highest in the world. For the time being, this has been excluded. Source: INTECH (2000) It may well be that some of these countries and especially those from the developing world and perhaps Ireland from the developed world are no real manufacturers of high tech products. This point will be examined in some detail in the last section. 2.2 The Catching Up of Developing Countries in High Tech Exports
