The objective of this study is to verify the role of national mechanisms of social empowerment in driving the development of the multidimensional nature of absorptive capacity at the national level, as a way of fostering innovation and economic prosperity for Latin American countries.
This research encompasses the 20 countries that make up the Latin American region. A Tobit model was used with censored data, in a panel format. The adoption of this model was necessary due to the characteristic of the dependent variable (national absorptive capacity) being an index that varies in the range of 1 to 7. The time horizon covers the period from 2006 to 2021.
The results show that the degree of economic development, institutions and locally developed innovation are the mechanisms for generating the multidimensional nature of the absorptive capacity of Latin American countries. The innovative base of the countries was the most significant variable and the biggest parameter to explain this relationship. This means that given the preexisting innovative capacity of these countries, it is possible to stimulate and increase the national absorptive capacity through this mechanism.
The originality of this article consists in analyzing the national mechanisms of social empowerment in the development of the multidimensional nature of absorptive capacity, which allows us to verify all the sources of absorptive capacity creation that can be transformed into innovation.
