COUNTRY REPORTS Infrastructure, Resident Patents and Income Levels in Developing Asia

This paper examines the state of basic and high-tech infrastructure, and their relationship with residents ’ patents and per capita incomes in Asia. Obviously, Asian economies with better basic infrastructure enjoyed relatively high per capita incomes, while not necessarily high levels of high-tech infrastructure and residents ’ patenting. Asian econ-omies with high levels of high-tech infrastructure show high per capita income levels as well as high residents ’ patenting levels. High-tech endowments helped Korea and Chinese Taipei to generate substantial resident patents. The transitional economies enjoyed fairly strong high-tech endowments, which was not translated into strong resident patents owing to reforms and cutbacks on funding. China, India and Pakistan show weak high-tech endowments and resident patents, but still performed better than the South-East Asian second-tier newly industrialised economics (NIEs). The Arab economies, Malaysia and Thailand enjoy strong basic infrastructure, but lack high-tech endowments and, with that, resident’s patenting capabilities. ASIA HAS ARGUABLY some of the most vibrant and successful economies among developing economies-with the East and South-East Asian mar-ket economies achieving rapid industrialisation-as well as some of the world’s poorest economies of the world in South Asia. The former contain