National technological specialisation and the highest technological opportunities historically

Following the New Institutional Economic approach, which states that shift in technological opportunities along particular trajectories is governed by paradigms or regimes, the paper investigates the prevailing technological opportunities in the last 100 years and the technological performance of some advanced countries. The statistical work of this paper identifies the countries specialised in the highest technological opportunities and attempts to give an explanation by referring to the institutional set-up of the economy. Only the country with a proper national system of innovation is likely to specialise in the highest technological opportunities. By contrast, countries with a miss-match between the institutional set-up of the economy and the prevailing technological paradigm are more likely to remain locked into inferior technological paths. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.