>http://funredes.org/mistica/castellano/emec/produccion/memoria13/0585.html

Indeed there is a difference. But everyone gets most of his/her
technology from elsewhere. I read somewhere (recently) that the
economist Edwin Mansfield estimated that it cost half as much to
accept a transferred industrial technology as to invent one. (I
didn't look up the original source, and I don't know how broadly the
rule of thumb would apply, but lets accept it for discussion sake.)
It is true that many people underestimate how hard it is to adapt and
adopt a technology, and we would agree that it is harder (and often
impossible) to do so when the conditions (and factor prices) are very
different in the recipient and source environments of the technology.
Still, Mansfield would suggest that you can save a lot of money
trying to select and adapt technology from Europe for Africa, as
compared with trying to invent everything anew.

John Daly
Nearby Thu Nov 17 18:19:39 2005