West-East Technology Transfer: The Trade Component*

Abstract

This chapter describes the set of trade data developed at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as an aid to quantify and assess the effects of Western technology exports to the six countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The data on intra- Council for Mutual Economic Co-operation (CMEA) exchanges of capital goods is fairly complete despite the failure of Romania — and subsequently the German Democratic Republic — to produce detailed commodity breakdowns of foreign trade since the early 1970s. The broad magnitude of the sectoral end-user patterns revealed by the two data sets within the material sphere are rather similar — though the CMEA figures tend to understate the share of industry and overstate that of transport and communications. In the Soviet Union, interpretation is more complex because of the particularly large rise in imports of Western food items — not only grain but also meat and processed foods.