ABSTRACT
Discussions of inter-country differences in the level of technological development have a long tradition. By and large, however, in the last 20 or so years they have been more inspired and attended by journalists and politicians than by researchers. Inter-country comparisons of technological levels are faced with two great obstacles: that of methodology and that of statistics. The concept of the technology gap was formulated for the first time in the neo-technology models of international trade back in the 1960s. In his famous paper on the relationship between international trade and technical change, M. V. Posner introduced the idea of the so-called imitation lag to identify the inter-country differences in technological performance. Potential technology is defined as the already existing stock of available technologies, which changes over time and is primarily determined by the rate and size of the inventive activities. The level of potential technology determines the level of applied technology, on a medium-term basis.
