شکاف های فناوری آسیایی به دلیل تفاوت کیفیت سرمایه انسانی است؟

This paper adopts the meta-frontier framework using DEAP software to analyse the technological gap and level of catch-up of the three regions in Asia (namely, Southern Asia, Eastern Asia and ASEAN5) with respect to the Asian technology as a whole for the period 1980–2006. Countries in Eastern Asia displayed a technology gap ratio of 1.000 which posits that this region defines the best practice frontier for Asia. Meanwhile, countries in Southern Asia region displayed an improvement in technical efficiency and productivity relative to the Asian frontier but lagged in terms of technological advancement. All three regions recorded a lag in technological advancement with respect to the best practice frontier. In order to progress technologically, these countries should be equipped with the necessary infrastructure and human capital to encourage foreign investment and growth. The countries in Eastern Asia and ASEAN5 recorded the strongest productivity growth performance as a group when compared to the countries in Southern Asia. In Southern Asia and ASEAN5 region, the technology gap ratio is below 1.000 subsequent to the 1997/98 financial crisis. On the contrary, East Asia kept up with the benchmark frontier during most of the sample period inclusive of the period after the financial crisis.

The ASEAN5 economies have recorded impressive economic performance during the past four decades. These countries have received increased international notice for their relatively strong economic growth performance and for their assertion of a collective approach to a range of foreign economic policy issues. The earlier growth and development experiences of the Southeast Asian economies cannot be explained by the ASEAN regional economic cooperation integration schemes per se. The ASEAN regional economic cooperation was initially weak and regional cooperative measures were broadly ineffective, despite ASEAN's existence since 1967. It was only since 1992, following the ASEAN Summit meeting in Singapore, that regional schemes have been strengthened including the adoption of trade liberalization measures that paved the way for the formation of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) (Daquila, 2004). The close regional ties and the financial and economic cooperation among the countries in ASEAN5 propels us to investigate the extent of the technological gap or catch-up between the ASEAN5 as a group with the Asian technology as a whole. In recent years, there has been increased interest in regional economic integration in South Asia. Regional integration in South Asia got the momentum in 1995 when the SAARC Preferential Trading Arrangement (SAPTA) was signed. SAARC stands for South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation and the member nations of SAARC are India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Pakistan. In early 2004, the SAARC member countries agreed to form a South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA). The SAFTA has become a parallel initiative to the multilateral trade liberalization commitments of the South Asian countries. SAFTA has come into force from 1 July 2006, with the aim of boosting intraregional trade among the seven SAARC members. In this context, the aim of this paper is to cluster the selected South Asian countries, namely, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka and compare the performance of this group relative to the Asian technology to identify the extent of the technological gap. Although Afghanistan has joined SAARC in 2005, but it has not included in this study due to unavailable data to be used; besides, this country has been suffering from long war. The three East Asian Tigers, namely Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan share a range of characteristics with China. An important question is the relevance of the experience of the Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan economies to current economic growth in China. In the 1980s it was argued that the export-centred growth of these three countries was of limited relevance to China because these countries were small and any effort to mimic them would result in more exports than the developed world could handle. This objection was later less often raised since the pattern of economic growth has been for exports to trigger economic growth in the coastal regions, and for these coastal regions to serve as markets and triggers for growth in the interior. Investors from the U.S., Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan established transplants in lower-wage countries like China, Vietnam, and Philippines (Haggard, 1990). Because of their geographical proximity, China is grouped with the three East Asian Tigers to evaluate the extent of their catch-up or lagging with respect to the Asian technology as a whole. All previous studies derived their decompositions under the assumption that all the countries in Asia operated under a common technology. This paper extends previous study by considering groups of countries in Asia which operate under different technologies thus relaxing the common technology assumption, as well as explicitly accounting for temporal effects, which measures productivity and efficiency changes over the period 1980–2006. In most empirical applications of the metafrontier, grouping of countries is implicit in the problem under consideration. There are no a priori theoretical prescriptions on how countries should be allocated to regions or groups when estimating frontiers. The groupings of countries must largely depend upon the purpose of the empirical analysis being conducted. O'Donnell et al. (2005) grouped countries by geographical regions, while Iyer et al. (2006) grouped countries by income levels. The disadvantage of income based groupings is that the income level changes over time and by leaving the grouping fixed overtime might bias the shape of the group frontiers and this influence the computed productivity measures. Therefore, in this present study, we have grouped the countries according to geographical regions to analyse the technological gap between each of the regional frontiers within Asia relative to the Asian frontier as a whole. We assume that countries that are in the same region share the same technology.

In several empirical applications of the metafrontiers, grouping of countries is implicit in the problem under consideration. There are no a priori theoretical prescriptions on how countries should be allocated to regions or groups when estimating frontiers. O'Donnell et al. (2005) grouped countries by geographical regions, while Iyer et al. (2006) grouped countries by income levels. The present study grouped the countries according to geographical regions to gauge the extent of a country's emphasis on technology catching-up. We assume that countries that are in the same region share the same technology. The models used by Battese et al. (2004) and by O'Donnell et al. (2005) are essentially static in nature and suitable for the measurement and analysis of the efficiency of firms at a given point of time. This study extends their work on metafrontiers to a temporal context involving the measurement of productivity growth over time in Asia. The present paper modifies previous study by considering groups of countries in Asia which operate under different technologies thus relaxing the common technology assumption, as well as explicitly accounting for temporal effects, which measures productivity and efficiency changes over the period 1980–2006. Our paper provides the metafrontier framework to measure and compare the productivity growth performance of countries under different technologies in Asia. There is no study, to the best of our knowledge, commissioned to investigate the technological gap and catch-up in productivity in Asia. In addition, this study extends the period of study until year 2006 as compared to the previous studies, thus taking into effect the latest technological change and how it affects the countries' performance in Asia. During the entire period of the study, countries in Southern Asia region displayed an improvement in technical efficiency and productivity relative to the Asian frontier. On the contrary, the Southern Asian group fell short of the technological advancement relative to the Asian technology during the full study period. This can be attributed to the lack of infrastructure and the necessary policies to encourage foreign technological investment in this region. In the Eastern Asia region, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan have been leading in terms of technological advancement and productivity growth as compared to the rest of the countries in Asia. Thus, it can be attributed that it is countries from this region defines Asian's best-practice frontier. ASEAN5 group recorded advancement in technological change relative to the metafrontier despite displaying lower efficiency and productivity during the entire sample period. However, during the crisis-and-post-crisis period, the ASEAN5 group experienced technological regress as compared to the benchmark frontier. This can be attributed to the fact that these countries were the biggest hit in the 1997/98 financial crisis and a large amount of foreign investment was pulled out during the crisis causing a decline in the technological investment. All the three regions recorded a lag in technological advancement with respect to the best practice frontier during the full period of study. This posits that there is room for improvement in terms of the necessary preconditions to technological advancement. To this end, the government in each of these countries formulates appropriate national policies to instil a favourable environment to encourage foreign investment especially in research and development and information and communications technology (ICT). In order to progress technologically, the countries should also be equipped with the necessary infrastructure and human capital to encourage foreign investment and growth. The countries in Eastern Asia and ASEAN5 recorded the strongest productivity growth performance as a group when compared to the countries in Southern Asia. The countries in Southern Asia, namely, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, belong in the lower income category based on the classification by the World Bank. Therefore, as compared to the Eastern Asia and ASEAN5 which generally have larger per capita income, countries in Southern Asia are falling short in terms of technological investment. Both in Southern Asia and ASEAN5 region, the technology gap ratio is below 1.000 subsequent to the 1997/98 financial crisis that hit the countries in Asia. This result is not surprising as during the financial crisis, these countries' production and GDP growth was largely affected, and thus, it is normal to find the result that these countries were producing lower than the optimal output. On the contrary, East Asia kept up with the benchmark frontier during most of the sample period inclusive the period after the financial crisis. Overall, we did not find evidence of any particular region falling significantly and consistently behind the Asian technology over the sample period. The MMPI column shows that potential productivity growth implicit in the Asian frontier as a whole is higher in most regions than that reported by the GMPI during the entire period of study. The policy implication from the results obtained from this study is that the estimates of the gap between group frontiers and the metafrontier can be used to design programs for performance improvement, but these programs involve changes to the production environment. Governments can change characteristics of the production environment by providing the necessary infrastructures, deregulating financial markets, and relaxing labour laws. In this context, measures of the gaps between group frontiers and the metafrontier are informative to aid in formulating new government policies. The “digital divide,” a term coined in the mid to late 1990s, refers to the gap between those whom have access to technology and those whom do not. Although the term's focus was not originally a cross country comparison, the digital divide has emerged as an important issue for policy-makers, particularly in the developing world. The link between investments in infrastructure and economic growth are very important issues to show the technology gap between and across Asia. Definitely, most of the developing countries are lacking sufficient infrastructure which is not as globally competitive as one with that infrastructure. The East Asian developed countries like Japan, South Korea and other countries in the region have better infrastructure than their counterparts in West Asia. The important factor beside the infrastructure that is determining the use of technology between and across Asians is the human capital development. The high skilled labour in East Asia helps to develop competitive companies and products that compete globally with their Western counterparts such as Japanese and Korean companies and products. While the West Asian region lack in this respect. The human culture plays important role in translating human skills to high quality technologies and products in most of East Asian Nations and back warded the West Asian nations to develop their economies to be high income countries and enjoy better life. Technology considered being facilitator that facilitates the economic activities. In this respect, people will make the change in innovating and using the technology that is powered by their culture and attitude towards mental satisfaction to contribute. The human factor shows the differences in creating and using technology between East and West Asians or what so called in this study as technology gap. Unlike other Eastern Asian nations Japan model that is followed by South Korean model had constructed companies such as Daewoo, Samsung and LG, those competed globally side by side with their Japanese counterparts in the automobile and electronics and electrical industries and products. This indicates the spillover effects that took place in Japan and South Korea through technology transfer and human capital skills upgrading that translated their products to high quality products and their ability to compete and led the global markets. In addition to their companies to led the foreign direct investment in East Asia and the rest of the world. The remaining Asian countries in the East or West Asia can benefit from the experience of Japan and Korea to develop their indigenous technology to fill the technology gap which appeared in this study within East Asian countries and between West and East Asia. People will make the change through changing their cultures and attitudes towards invention and innovation activities that turned Japan and Korea into advanced technology based companies and products. The collaboration between different economic blocks and Japan Korea is of important need to fill this technology gap.