Innovation Policy for Development: An Overview by Manuel Trajtenberg: Comments

This presentation comments on Manuel Trajtenberg¿s paper Innovation Policy for Development. The purpose of that paper includes discussing innovation policy guidelines for developing countries and employing the Israeli experience to derive lessons for growth-promoting innovation policies, among others. Comments arise from the main issues introduced by the paper and are organized as follows: 1. What is the scope of innovation in developing economies: R&D vs. other innovation activities. Distribution across firms and sectors; 2. Evidence on how partial appropriability and credit market problems affect innovation decisions; 3. Policy instruments: how government support schemes have worked in developing countries vis-a-vis developed ones. This presentation was created for the Second LAEBA Annual Meeting, held at Buenos Aires, Argentina, on November 28-29, 2005.