Evolutionary and Interacting Spheres that Condition the Technological Capabilities Accumulation in Latin America

The studies about technological capability accumulation (TCA) processes tend to adopt a narrow perspective to science, technology, and innovation and their policies, which is insufficient to understand these processes. It is necessary to frame the TCA processes at national levels, including technical, economic, environmental, social, and political factors, which interact and co-evolve. This chapter groups these factors into two spheres: the techno-economic and environmental (TEES) and the socio-political (SPS) spheres. The aim is to identify development profiles of Latin American countries in terms of TEES and SPS, and discuss their implications for TCA. It is argued that countries’ evolutionary trajectory combines these spheres differently, which results in diverse development profiles; this affects the TCA. This analysis is based on a dynamics structural model, which combines a long-term analysis (1970–2015) of eighteen countries to verify the existence of cointegration between TEES and SPS, and the identification and estimation of long-run paths that determine different country profiles in the region.