Leading Sectors in Economic Development: The Role of Manufacturing in Pakistan's Recent Expansion

One of the more rapidly growing areas of economic research involves identifying the major factors contributing to national economic growth and expansion. For the advanced market economies a consensus has emerged that measured technological change explains a significant share of total economic growth as well as growth in labour productivity. Unfortunately, the precise determinants of technological change are poorly understood. Some economists have focused on the role of research and development, as influenced by government patent protection, in producing new technological breaksthrough. Others have studied learning-by-doing and diffusion of production knowledge among workers, industries, and countries, and even across generations. Still others have considered how better education becomes embodied in human capital and how better technology becomes embodied in physical capital.