Free-riding can happen among societies too. It is quite possible that a society doing little R&D itself but applying R&D results from other societies outcompetes those. I hear this is happening in the form that some asian countries learn from the west without investing as much.
I don’t know if those examples show ‘outcompeting’. The overall picture of various countries doesn’t show late growers exceeding the absolute wealth of early growers (maybe one would predict this based on cultural/human-capital/institution theories?).
As far as Western industrialization went, the big players in roughly chronological order were the UK, Netherlands, France, USA, & Austria/Germany. It seems fair to call them the ‘innovators’, and you seem to have only East Asian countries in mind, so I’ll look at just China/Taiwan/Korea (South, but not North)/Japan/Hong Kong (which I think is all of them) as ‘imitators’.
Consider their wealth (GDP PPP per capita); in descending order it goes: United States (10), Hong Kong (10), Netherlands/Belgium (13/24), Austria/Germany (16/17), Taiwan (22), France (26), Japan (27), UK (28), South Korea (30), and 60 places way down the list is China (89).
How badly are they outcompeted? Well, South Korea & China beat none of them, Japan just barely edges out the UK (which we might attribute to socialist decay), Taiwan is past France & the UK but is pretty small, and Hong Kong is even more exceptional (tiny & UK-founded). In general, it seems to be better to be an ‘innovator’ than a (successful) ‘imitator’.
If I drop Hong Kong as too tiny and exceptional, the permutations seem to be going in the direction of innovation being better too:
R> countries <- data.frame(PPP=c( 10, 10, 13, 24, 16, 17, 22, 26, 27, 28, 30, 89),
Innovator=c(TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, FALSE))
R> wilcox.test(PPP ~ Innovator, data=countries)
Wilcoxon rank sum test with continuity correction
data: PPP by Innovator
W = 24.5, p-value = 0.2903
At least, if the East Asians are ‘outcompeting’, it doesn’t look like it’s clearly happened yet.
If you’re talking about copycats reducing the distance they lag behind innovators, at a reduced cost relative to what the innovators invested into building that distance, those are good examples.
It’s hard to do country comparisons because of all the confounders. But for particular industries, it’s easy to find examples.
The Japanese automobile industry clearly outcompeted the US one during the late 80s and the 90s, for example. Or look at where all the semiconductors are produced.
This is not to say that being a copycat is better than being an innovator—just that the first-mover advantage sometimes is significant and sometimes is not.
On what basis do you consider the Japanese automobile industry not engaging in research and innovation?
For the data I can find Japan had in 1984 62k granted patents while the US had 67k Given that the US had roughly twice the population, Japan might have outcompeted the US because of more innovation.
On what basis do you consider the Japanese automobile industry not engaging in research and innovation?
You twist my words—I said nothing like this.
The Japanese cars gained market share in the US not because they were more technologically advanced. Their primary advantage was that they were more reliable, mostly as a function of better manufacturing practices.
As far as I remember it was more a function of the assembly workers tightening up the nuts with the correct torque and not dropping engine blocks on the floor before installing them. I am not sure better quality control counts as “higher sophistication” in this context.
Reducing the distance they lag behind by copy-catting is outcompeting—in the relative sense. Otherwise they wouldn’t catch up but fall further behind. That they didn’t start out at the same level could be considered more historical chance than missing ability.
Free-riding can happen among societies too. It is quite possible that a society doing little R&D itself but applying R&D results from other societies outcompetes those. I hear this is happening in the form that some asian countries learn from the west without investing as much.
Freerider societies actually outcompeting innovators? Name three.
I wouldn’t call it freerider society but rather copy-cat societies but...
Japan did this at the end of the 19th century:
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2781050?uid=3737864&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104386363121
And China did this until recently
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/processors/arm-days-of-china-copying-western-tech-are-ending-1247241
I guess quite a few asian satellites e.g. Taiwan did/do this too.
I don’t know if those examples show ‘outcompeting’. The overall picture of various countries doesn’t show late growers exceeding the absolute wealth of early growers (maybe one would predict this based on cultural/human-capital/institution theories?).
As far as Western industrialization went, the big players in roughly chronological order were the UK, Netherlands, France, USA, & Austria/Germany. It seems fair to call them the ‘innovators’, and you seem to have only East Asian countries in mind, so I’ll look at just China/Taiwan/Korea (South, but not North)/Japan/Hong Kong (which I think is all of them) as ‘imitators’.
Consider their wealth (GDP PPP per capita); in descending order it goes: United States (10), Hong Kong (10), Netherlands/Belgium (13/24), Austria/Germany (16/17), Taiwan (22), France (26), Japan (27), UK (28), South Korea (30), and 60 places way down the list is China (89).
How badly are they outcompeted? Well, South Korea & China beat none of them, Japan just barely edges out the UK (which we might attribute to socialist decay), Taiwan is past France & the UK but is pretty small, and Hong Kong is even more exceptional (tiny & UK-founded). In general, it seems to be better to be an ‘innovator’ than a (successful) ‘imitator’.
If I drop Hong Kong as too tiny and exceptional, the permutations seem to be going in the direction of innovation being better too:
At least, if the East Asians are ‘outcompeting’, it doesn’t look like it’s clearly happened yet.
I find it a very sensible move to go for numbers here, esp. GDP/capita, but I’m not sure that captures the outcompeting/freeriding that was meant.
If you’re talking about copycats reducing the distance they lag behind innovators, at a reduced cost relative to what the innovators invested into building that distance, those are good examples.
For outcompeting, no.
It’s hard to do country comparisons because of all the confounders. But for particular industries, it’s easy to find examples.
The Japanese automobile industry clearly outcompeted the US one during the late 80s and the 90s, for example. Or look at where all the semiconductors are produced.
This is not to say that being a copycat is better than being an innovator—just that the first-mover advantage sometimes is significant and sometimes is not.
On what basis do you consider the Japanese automobile industry not engaging in research and innovation?
For the data I can find Japan had in 1984 62k granted patents while the US had 67k Given that the US had roughly twice the population, Japan might have outcompeted the US because of more innovation.
You twist my words—I said nothing like this.
The Japanese cars gained market share in the US not because they were more technologically advanced. Their primary advantage was that they were more reliable, mostly as a function of better manufacturing practices.
One could consider that to be asign if higher sophistication.
As far as I remember it was more a function of the assembly workers tightening up the nuts with the correct torque and not dropping engine blocks on the floor before installing them. I am not sure better quality control counts as “higher sophistication” in this context.
Reducing the distance they lag behind by copy-catting is outcompeting—in the relative sense. Otherwise they wouldn’t catch up but fall further behind. That they didn’t start out at the same level could be considered more historical chance than missing ability.