Knowledge Intensity in a Set of Latin American Countries: Implications for Productivity

This article proposes to measure the knowledge intensity of economies with an alternative approach to those based on the aggregation of industries according to their R&D expenditure or the qualification of the workforce. The proposed metric is based on the economic valuation of productive services provided by a set of assets that incorporate knowledge, specifically human capital and information and communication technologies (ICT). Rather than using a single indicator to measure knowledge intensity, we follow an economic approach rooted in a growth accounting methodology, determining the contribution of each individual asset according to the prices of the services they provide. This methodology is applied to four Latin-American (LA) countries, namely Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, taking the United States and Spain as benchmarks for the period 2000-2016.