International R&D spillovers and productivity trends in the Asian miracle economies

This paper examines the importance of the domestic R&D stock and foreign knowledge spillovers on total factor productivity for six Asian miracle economies over the period from 1955 to 2006. The productivity effects of international knowledge spillovers through the following channels are considered: imports, exports, inward foreign direct investment, patents, geographical proximity and no specific channel. The estimates show that knowledge has been transmitted through all the channels considered but that the import channel and the no-weighting channel have probably been the most important ones for the Asian miracle economies. Asian miracle ; knowledge spillovers ; R&D ; TFP