From academic publications and patents to the technological development of the economy: Short and long run causalities

Abstract

Purpose: The paper examines the potential effects of academic publications on patenting and the share of high technology exports. We test the short-run and the long-run causalities among high technology exports, the number of academic publications and the number of patents in three separate models. Methodology/Approach: Our sample consists of panel data for 61 countries and 20 years. The panel Granger causality and vector error correction model have been used in order to capture the short-run causalities. Furthermore, panel cointegration regressions have been applied to test for long-run causalities. Findings: Our results strongly suggest that there is a positive long-run effect of academic publications on both patenting and the share of high technology exports. This suggests that the outcomes of basic science in the form publications strongly support technological development, and thus emphasises the importance of basic research. In addition the effect of patents on high technology exports is mostly insignificant when controlling for academic publications and GDP. Research Limitation/implication: First, the variables used in the analysis are only proxies. The scope of the data has been significantly limited by the data availability. This leads also to limited the number of control variables. Originality/Value of paper: There are still only a very limited number of studies testing the effect of academic outcomes on the technological development of the economy. Our research brings new empirical insights into this problem.