Product Invention, Foreign Ownership and Welf Are

THE CRITICAL role played by new technology – its adaptation and diffusion – in the growth process of a developing economy is now widely accepted. The importance accorded to technological progress is of course not limited to LDCs only. Modern growth theory stresses that it is the technological application of labour and capital and not merely their presence which crucially influences the rate of economic growth in an economy. However, given the enormous technological gap that currently exists between the MDCs and the LDCs and the opportunity for the latter to draw upon the vastly increased stock of operationally useful knowledge now possessed by the former, technological advance as a factor determining growth rates acquires a still greater significance for the LDCs.