National innovation surveys in Latin America: empirical evidence and policy implications

The following articles provide the results of the analysis of innovation surveys in 5 Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay. Those countries account for the 80% of total regional manufacturing value added and offer a good proxy of regional manufacturing performance. The diversity and the heterogeneity of these countries allow to grasp eventual asymmetries in innovative conducts and National Innovation Systems between small and big size economies, different specialization patterns, low and medium income economies and to take into account potential differences between growing and lagging economies. The results presented in this issue represent a step forward with respect to existing literature about innovation in the region. They provide an analysis of cooperation and innovation in Latin America in a comparative perspective from different angles exploiting the variety and heterogeneity of innovation surveys between countries and they contribute to the analysis of the determinants of cooperation and innovation at the firm level in the case of peripheral countries. In addition, the results contribute to express a call for strengthening the innovation measurement agenda in Latin America to improve the contribute of micro-level data analysis for policy design and evaluation.