A Brief Future of Time in the Monopoly of Scientific Knowledge

This seminal paper provides global empirical evidence on catch-up processes in scientific and technical publications. Its purpose is to model the future of scientific knowledge monopoly in order to understand whether the impressive growth experienced by latecomers in the industry has been accompanied by a similar catch-up in scientific capabilities and knowledge contribution. The empirical evidence is based on 41 catch-up panels which together consist of 99 countries. The richness of the dataset allows us to disaggregate countries into fundamental characteristics based on income-levels (high-income, lower-middle-income, upper-middle-income and low-income), legal-origins (English common-law, French civil-law, German civil-law and, Scandinavian civil-law) and, regional proximity (South Asia, Europe & Central Asia, East Asia & the Pacific, Middle East & North Africa, Latin America & the Caribbean and, Sub-Saharan Africa). Three main issues are investigated: the presence or not of catch-up processes, the speed of the catch-up processes and, the time needed for full (100%) catch-up. The findings based on absolute and conditional catch-up patterns broadly show that advanced countries will continue to dominate in scientific knowledge contribution. Policy implications are discussed