A look at Technological Catch-up Studies from the Perspective of Sustainability Transitions: A Meta-Synthesis Review

One of the key issues in the global economy is the extent to which global change creates opportunities for developing countries to prosper. The school of neoclassical economics has emphasized on catch-up, yet it has considered the policies and strategies of catching up to be the same for all countries. With the emergence of evolutionary economics, this perspective has changed. It led to the interest of pursuing technological advancement in developing countries and even to surpass developed ones in terms of technological catch-up studies. These studies, in light of global developments, have changed and evolved over history. In this regard, this article examines the trend of technological catch-up studies. In the present study 92 articles were extracted from 21 prestigious journals in the period of 58 years (1962- 2020). Based on the Meta-Synthesis method, two main paths of "Low road" and "High road" were identified in technological catch-up studies in the literature, and the characteristics of each of them were extracted and compared based on existing literature. The findings suggest that the process of technological catch-up studies is moving towards sustainability transitions with an emphasis on opening up windows of endogenous opportunity, through the management of a set of activities for the development of socio-technical regimes, and based on Technological innovation systems analysis to create more proactive responses from follower countries. Finally, suggestions have been made for future studies of technological catch- up.