Empresas multinacionales, especialización tecnológica y convergencia en países

Using patent data from EPO from 1978 to 2002, this paper aims to identify the role of MNE in the determination of technological specialization trends and convergence in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico and the extend to which the technological activity of these companies helps to define the technical distribution of competences in the country. The main findings are: (i) countries are specialized in technical fields less dynamic and pervasive, which explains its strong distance to world; (ii) MNEs exploit home-country advantages thought local advantages more than following the national technical strengths; (iii) MNEs contribute to diversification of local technical base because they are more active in technical fields where catching-up countries are not specialized.