WHAT MAKES A COUNTRY SOCIALLY CAPABLE OF CATCHING UP

What Makes a Country Socially Capable of Catching Up? - In this study, the authors test whether social capability promotes catching up, the hypothesis that there is technological spillover from leaders to follo wers. A simple model that captures the hypothesized interaction is pre sented and tested on an extended sample of countries. The stock of hum an capital and the degree of integration into the world economy are us ed to measure social capability. Both measures are important in determ ining the degree to which the catching-up potential is realized. The a uthors also find an independent effect of increased trade intensity an d trade regime on productivity growth.