Changes in National Technological Competitiveness: 1990, 1993, 1996 and 1999

Georgia Tech's Technology Policy and Assessment Center, with support from the US National Science Foundation, has been generating High-Tech Indicators (HTI) — measures of national technology-based export competitiveness since 1987. This paper reports the HTI results for 33 nations in 1999 in comparison with those of 1990, 1993 and 1996. HTI includes four 'input indicators' and a key 'output indicator' — technological standing. We construct a new composite input indicator here and examine its predictive capability. Input indicators for 1990 and 1993 show intriguing relationships to 1999 technological standing. We compare the indicators for various groups — leading and emerging Western economies, rapidly developing Asian economies, former Eastern Bloc nations and lagging Latin American countries. The USA presently exhibits a dominant position, but signs strongly point toward increasingly broad-based competition in technology-based products.