Escaping the middle-income technology trap: A comparative analysis of industrial policies in China, Brazil and South Africa

Abstract Instead of catching up with advanced economies, most middle-income countries have remained stuck in a middle-income trap. We identify and analyse the triple challenges of ‘breaking into’ the global economy, ‘linking up’ into global value chains while ‘linking back’ to the local production system, and ‘keeping pace’ with technological change and innovation. We focus specifically on what we term the ‘middle-income technology trap’: specific structural and institutional configurations that are not conducive to increasing domestic value addition and to sustained industrial and technological upgrading. We explore this through case studies of China, Brazil and South Africa and the analysis of the evolution of their industrial policies and specific institutions, specifically InnoFund model in China, the Embrapa system in Brazil, and the Manufacturing Competitiveness Enhancement Programme in South Africa. Industrial policy implications for middle-income countries in particular, and for developing countries more widely, are finally discussed.