Speaker: Keun Lee, Professor of Economics and Director, Center for Economic Catch-up at Seoul National University, South Korea

Please join us for a guest lecture by Professor Keun Lee. Professor Lee will discuss his new book, Schumpeterian Analysis of Economic Catch-up: Knowledge, Path-Creation, and the Middle-Income Trap (Cambridge University Press, November 2013). This event will be chaired by Professor Calestous Juma. It will be held in conjunction with Professor Juma's class, IGA-523, and co-sponsored by both the Center for Economic Catch-up at Seoul National University and HKS Executive Education's Innovation for Economic Development.

From the publisher: One of the puzzles about why some countries have stronger economic growth than others revolves around the so-called 'middle-income trap', the situation in which a country that has grown strongly gets stuck at a certain level. In this book, Keun Lee explores the reasons why examples of successful catching-up are limited and in particular, why the Asian economies, including China, have managed to move, or are moving, beyond middle-income status but economic growth has stalled in some Latin American countries. This is one of the first studies to demonstrate using patent analysis that the secret lies in innovative systems at the firm, sector and country levels which promote investment in what the author calls 'short-cycle' technologies and thereby create a new path different from that of forerunning countries. With its comprehensive policy framework for development as well as useful quantitative methods, this is essential reading for academic researchers and practitioners.