Internationalization of technical change and the intermadiate countriesA preliminary approach from the experience of South European economies

Resumen

The aim of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of those cases from a twofold perspective: first, the consequences of the new international technological activity of MNCS for their respective economies, and especially their systems of innovation. Second, the particular circumstances determining the recent and very rapid process of international commitment of firms originating from those nations which follow different trajectories to those of large and "traditional" MNCS. Apart from the academic interest of this matter, it also has a political importance because some of the most clear "intermediate countries" (ICS) are in Europe: furthermore, part of the uneven situation of the process of European unification has to do with the asymmetric ways in which different actors participate in the new international scenario.