The capacity of developing economies to narrow the gap in living standards with the OECD nations depends critically on their ability to imitate and innovate new technologies. Toward this end, developing economies have access to three avenues of technological advance: technology transfer,...

This paper uses a survey of 1,826 firms distributed over ten East Asian metropolitan areas – Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Seoul, and five Chinese cities – to investigate the sources of firm-level R&D capabilities. The analysis identifies the impact of 23 survey variables, classified by...