Technological regimes, catching-up and leapfrogging: findings from the Korean industries

This paper examines the experiences of selected industries in Korea to identify the stylized facts in the process of technological capability building, and thereby, to sort out the conditions for the catching-up to occur. To explain the process, we have built a model of technological and market catching-up. A special attention has been given to the question of whether there has been a case of leapfrogging in any industry in Korea and, if so, what are: the conditions for its incidence. In our framework, we first measure the degree of catching-up in terms of market shares in the world. Then, we focus on catching-up in technological capabilities in explaining the different record and prospects of Korean industries in market catching-up. In the model, technological capability is determined as a function of both technological effort and the existing knowledge base. As determinants of technological effort, we look at the technological regimes of the industries, such as cumulativeness of technical advances, fluidity (predictability) of technological trajectory, and the properties of knowledge base. Using this model, we explain the different technological evolution of the selected industries in Korea, including the D-RAM, automobile, mobile phone, consumer electronics, personal computer and machine tool industries. We find three different patterns of catching-ups, path-creating catching-up (CDMA mobile phone), path-skipping catching-up (D-RAM and automobile), and path-following catching-up (consumer electronics, personal computers and machine tools). We interpret the first two case of catching-up as "leapfrogging." Unlike the argument by Perez and Soete [Perez, C., Soete, L., 1988. Catching-up in technology: entry barriers and windows of opportunity. In: Dosi, et al., (Eds.), Technical Change and Economic Theory, Pinter Publishers, London.], we find that important R&D projects, except automobiles where only private R&D was involved, involved both private and public capacities, and that entry was not driven by endogenous generation of knowledge and skills, but by collaboration with foreign companies. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.