The Role of Science and Technology Policies in Natural Resources Based Economies

Revision with unchanged content. Natural Resource Abundance (NRA) has been at the center of an intensive and steady debate during the last decades. Is it a real "curse" deterring NRA countries from economic growth or a development catalyst once some conditions are fulfilled? Country cases supporting both positions may be brought up. Decades ago, Finland was considered an economy strongly depending on its natural resource based industries. However, by implementing policies aiming at promoting science and technology as a pivotal driving economic force Finland was able of leaving behind its NRA dependency, becoming a technology-intensive economy. During the last decades, Chile has achieved significant growth rates due to successful economic reforms based on an open market and export-led strategy. Nevertheless, Chile's economy is still based on exploiting-natural-resources industries, not having the country been able of jumping from a raw-material-based stage to a knowledge-based one as Finland did. The book explores the role of science and technology policy in leading NRA nations to achieve high technology intensity economies by focusing on the cases of Finland and Chile.