the purpose of the present paper is to review some of the research findings obtained during the course of a four year long exploration into the economics of technology generation in ldcs. individual firm and industry studies were undertaken by a team of economists and engineers in some of the major latin american countries in order to shed some light upon: 1. the rate and nature of the domestic technology-generating efforts carried out by different companies and manufacturing sectors. 2. the macro and micro variables which affect such knowledge-generating efforts.