Measuring national ‘emerging technology’ capabilities

Abstract

How can national capabilities to develop emerging technologies be measured? We use INSPEC and EI Compendex class codes to examine 33 countries' research and development activity. We select candidate emerging technologies based on the Rand Corporation's categories. We screen these to tally those that show strong recent, and increasing, R&D publication rates. The resulting measures show strong convergence; indeed, their lack of divergence is unsettling. Our measures suggest that China now stands forth as an ‘emerging technology’ research power comparable to Germany, the UK, and France. A number of other nations evidence a striking lack of R&D activity, posing questions about their longer-range high-tech competitiveness.

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