ABSTRACT
This chapter explains two motivations. The first is to understand the sources of learning in industry and in so doing relate it to firm-level performance employing simple statistical techniques. Second motivation derives from the well-debated notion that knowledge growth, validation and transfer is a socially distributed process, mediated by institutions. The chapter explores the role of institutions underlying firm behaviour using firm-level data in the countries studied. It concentrates on the forms, role and technological knowledge, its acquisition and the institutions for diffusing it. The chapter presents an analytical framework based on firm-level data and draws a profile of the impact of formal qualification and human skills on the rate of learning and levels of technological capability acquired. It examines issues of clustering or networking in a systematic manner, and identifies a large measure of communalism that is cultural and ethnically determined.
