討論

The first question from the floor asked how it is that a capability for innovation can be developed. Professor Amsden mentioned three mechanisms beyond technology transfer in her reply. 1) Acquisitions, such as the purchases of American machine tool companies made by Taiwanese firms during the 1980s. 2) Emigre returnees, for instance Taiwanese trained in advanced countries and/or those with work experience overseas. 3) Extensive spending on research and development and hiring of trained technicians (in some cases through moonlighting). Samsung Semiconductors in Korea is an excellent example of these kinds of innovation. She stressed here that a capacity for "creativity" is not what is at issue, arguing that analyses of Japan which have stressed the country's ability to copy but claimed that it is incapable of innovating miss the point that it takes time to catch up to the technological frontier.

Professor Suehiro Akira of the Institute of Social Sciences then asked four questions.

1. What is knowledge? Is information technology (IT) changing the nature of knowledge, and is contemporary knowledge still comparable to that embodied in production technology and which has been concentrated upon in the literature on late development?

2. The Japanese make a simple distinction between "frontrunners" and "latecomers" in industrialization. There are then, however, "late-latecomers" such as Korea and Taiwan, that look more or less like the latecomers, as described in the "flying geese" model of economic development. Countries such as Thailand, however, are "late-late-latecomers". Professor Suehiro expressed some skepticism about the ability of these countries to catch up with even the late-latecomers, particularly given advances in information technology. These countries are also significantly constrained by international organizations, and the World Bank in particular has rejected interventionist approaches to industrial development promoted by Japan's MITI. Professor Suehiro thus wanted to know how the controls these international institutions exercise affect contemporary economic development and whether countries subject to them will follow a different path to industrialization.

3. While agreeing with Professor Amsden that income distribution has been centrally important, he noted that she did not refer in her talk to the employment effect. Many people in Japan and the United States are arguing for an abandonment of the manufacturing sector and a shift towards advanced services. However, Microsoft employs only one-twentieth the number of people that Ford does, and these people all have quite advanced educational backgrounds. Professor Suehiro thus wondered how many people the new economic model can employ.

4. 4) What is a technological capability? Professor Suehiro noted here that while most American political economists have been obsessed with the question of state capacity at the level of the bureaucracy, Professor Amsden and Japanese scholars have looked carefully at skill formation at the shop floor. To this focus, Professor Amsden has now added a wider conception of knowledge. However, again mentioning the emergence of the information technology sector, Professor Suehiro wondered how we might evaluate the role of basic research (the ability to develop a new product) rather than innovations in production techniques in the contemporary world. As an example, he mentioned the electronics industry in Taiwan, which has developed close links with Silicon Valley. Recently, however, the Taiwanese industry has begun to shift to mainland China, and as a result the role of the Taiwanese firm has increasingly become one of coordinating relations between the US, Taiwan, and mainland China (Japan, he noted, is not included in this new relationship). This new trend, Professor Suehiro suggested, is closely linked to the growing importance of IT.

Professor Amsden began her response by addressing Professor Suehiro's second question and suggesting that the distinction between early- and latecomer industrialization is no longer adequate. More important now, she argued, is a division into countries where industries are nationally-owned (and hence based on R&D, acquisitions, imported labor, and so forth) and those where they are primarily foreign-owned (and thus based primarily on spillovers). The real question that needs to be asked, she suggested, is not whether countries like Thailand and Malaysia can "catch up" with countries like Korea and Taiwan, but rather which kind of model they will adapt. The emergence of the first kind of country, she noted, required very special conditions in the post-World War II era, and in the future it is much more likely that countries of the second variety will emerge.

On the issue of the constraints posed by the World Trade Organization (WTO), Professor Amsden argued that they are in fact very minor and that international institutions continue to allow countries a huge amount of latitude. If the WTO had really required free markets, she argued, its membership would likely have been limited to Hong Kong. The WTO is in fact an institution designed more to promote science and technology than to promote free trade. Thanks to the US Department of Defense and the National Institute of Health, it continues to be legal to protect research and development. As a result, industrial promotion policies in Korea and Taiwan are now referred to as promoting "science and technology", with huge subsidies being given to "science parks". Similarly, thanks to the EU, regional development policy continues to be possible under the WTO, and this kind of policy is also a very popular form of industrial promotion at the moment. Infant industry protection is permitted for up to eight years, and previous trade barriers have been relabelled "anti-dumping measures". India and Brazil continue to require that MNCs export as much as they import. Under the WTO, then, business continues as usual.

As to the third question regarding employment effects, Professor Amsden agreed that this effect is very important. Textiles, for instance, generated both a large amount of employment and (because of relatively low entry barriers) extensive opportunities for entrepreneurialism in developing countries. As for the impact of information technology, she stated that she does not see IT posing a major hurdle in the process of catching up. Indeed, she identified such labor-intensive sectors as e-commerce and data processing as major opportunities for late developers, and noted that there is no reason that services could not be leading sectors in such countries. Important differences do exist, however, between these new information-intensive sectors. Barriers to entry in pharmaceuticals, for instance, have been so high that even Japan has not been able to succeed in the sector, while biotechnology will be much more inviting for latecomers. But as long as these countries are able to computerize their societies, substantial opportunities exist.

The next questioner stated that he had some trouble understanding the distinction Professor Amsden made in her talk between information and knowledge. When economists talk about incomplete information, he argued, they do in fact discuss information processing, systems of information, and other categories which Professor Amsden included within the concept of "knowledge". Economists have long been interested in improving the processing of information, and dealing with related market imperfections has been a central theme in economics since at least the time of Adam Smith. Friedrich List, similarly, had much to say about the role of government, and economists generally have been very interested in how to build up information within societies. As a result, the questioner found it difficult to locate Professor Amsden's theory vis-a-vis competing theories in economics.

In her reply, Professor Amsden stated that while there are huge areas of overlap between her approach and more traditional economic theories, there are also very large differences. New growth theory, for instance, has continued to argue that knowledge is a public good, a position which is radically different from her focus on knowledge as a proprietary asset of firms and as an entry barrier. Indeed, new growth theory does not even discuss firms, for a variety of reasons (including the intractability of the mathematical modeling involved). Joseph Stiglitz, similarly, does not consider this issue, and in the World Development Report on the knowledge-based economy that he helped to author there is nothing at all about knowledge as a proprietary asset which developing countries cannot acquire. Her theory thus diverges radically from such approaches, and indeed she suggested that the assumption that information is not scarce is a huge contradiction in economic theory. Her work is thus much closer to the literature on economic governance than it is to work on information in economics.

The following question related to Gerschenkron's work on late industrialization. The questioner noted that Professor Amsden had stressed the necessity for firms in late-developing countries to learn foreign technology, as well as the role governments play in this process. However, he wanted to know precisely what kinds of control are necessary to promote learning by firms. In responding, Professor Amsden agreed that it is not possible for governments to force firms to learn, but she reiterated that they have invested a great deal of effort in trying to make learning as attractive as possible for firms. Attempts to get firms to upgrade their managerial techniques, more or less forcing firms to invest in R&D, and efforts to tempt immigrants back home in order to take advantage of the skills they had acquired abroad have all been part of this process, as has the very close surveillance governments direct at firms.

The final question took up a phrase from the subtitle of Professor Amsden's forthcoming book and asked what western countries are doing in response to the "challenge to the west" posed by latecomer industrialization. Professor Amsden replied that the US in particular is trying very hard to keep these countries down by using the traditional western weapons of free trade and market opening. Referring to Gallagher and Robinson's classic 1953 article "The Imperialism of Free Trade", she stated that these tactics are now being used against Japan as well. The US financial industry has been particularly insistent upon increasing its overseas market access as it tries to expand globally and achieve even greater economies of scale. Ultimately, she said, the battle is one over the model of Mexico, which has remained highly dominated by foreign capital, and Korea, where more independent national development has been possible.

＜文責：Derek Hall＞