Guest Introduction to the special issue: technological innovation systems in Iran

Introduction to the special issue: technological innovation systems in Iran Neoclassical theory of trade predicts that international trade through technology transfer and learning-by-doing enhances the technological capabilities of latecomer countries. However, the experiences of many emerging economies show the latecomers to industrialization face daunting task of technological development even under the best of international trading circumstances. Moreover, the problem of catching-up becomes even more complex when the emerging economies face techno-economic sanctions. Economic sanctions, which restrict or altogether impede international trade, aimed at depriving the sanctioned country the benefits of international trade to achieve certain foreign policy goals, have been used extensively since Second World War. Specifically, during 1945-1990, 60 economic sanction cases have been observed, of which two-thirds were imposed by the USA (Lopez and Cortright, 2018). The Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the countries which have been the target of multilateral and bilateral sanctions since its inception in 1979. After the triumph of the revolution in 1979, Iran has faced “crippling” economic sanctions, because of her strategy of technological catch-up. The Western powers have erroneously construed Iran’s strategy of technological catch-up as the country’s aim to develop military nuclear technology. Nevertheless, despite the four-decade-long economic sanctions, the country had major advances in technological capability building. The study of the technological development of Iran during the past four decades is the subject of three sets of chapters and articles that have appeared in two books and special issues of the academic journal. The first set of papers appeared in a book edited by Soofi and Ghazinoory (2013), which includes a chapter on the technological development of the Iranian nuclear industry. The second set of articles appeared in a special issue of Technological Forecasting and Social Change (Ghazinoory and Soofi, 2017). Additionally, in the same year, an edited book was published that dealt with innovation and technological development of Iran (Soofi and Goodarzi, 2017). This special issue, as the fourth set in the collection, deals with the latest developments in the national system of innovation of the country. Below we provide a bird’s-eyes view of the articles in this special issue as a guidepost for the convenience of the reader. The first article in this issue “Policy coherence as demand for excellence in Iranian bioproduction industry,” deals with the innovation in the Iranian bio-production, a hightechnology industry. The article states that despite technological achievements, the industry still faces some obstacles to meet the standards to be among the industries listed on the National Plan for Excellence. The author(s) identify the conflicting policies for the national health system and industrial development as the major obstacle in the path of further technological advances in the industry. The second article, “Evaluation of the effect of R&D subsidies on Iranian Firms’ Innovative Behavior: reconceptualizing behavioral additionality,” examines the impact of government subsidies on the firm’s innovation. Using propensity score matching technique, the article discusses that the firms that receive government subsidies in Iran go through behavioral changes. The third article, “Iranian Firms in Biopharmaceutical Value Chain: Where to Go Now? ” reviews the rapid growth of the Iranian biopharmaceutical firms in the past two decades. Specifically, the author(s) study the positioning of the firms in the biopharmaceutical value Guest editorial