Abstract:

The goal of this article is establishing connection between research and development (R&D) expenditures, being the measure of a knowledge based economy, and the competitive position of the main competitors in the international trade of high-tech products measured with the share of the discussed countries in international high-tech exports, share of high-tech exports in overall exports and the dynamics of the growth rate of high-tech exports in comparison with the dynamics of the growth rate of overall exports. The analysis of publications concerning knowledge-based economy and international trading and processing data provided by the World Bank databases for the period of 2000-2015 enabled to partially confirm the research hypothesis claiming that the development of a knowledge-based economy measured as a share of GDP allocated to R&D expenditures influences the growth of the dynamics of the exports of technologically advanced products. The conducted research presents that the leading countries in the field of high-tech exports are also the countries where the greatest share of GDP is allocated to funding R&D. These countries are China, Germany, the USA, the European Union as well as South Korea and Singapore. Furthermore, when considering the share of high-tech exports in general exports, a number of less developed countries which do not appear on the lists of countries with significant R&D expenditures, such as Thailand, entered the presented ranking. On the grounds of the conducted analysis the application and confirmation of two theories of international trade can be observed: the technological gap theory (Germany, the USA and Japan) and the product life-cycle theory (China, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam).