Loading...

Investigating the Impact of Key Innovation Variables on the Level of Technological Catch up: A Comparison between High and Middle Income Countries

Fakhimi Jamil, Mohammad Amin | 2020

535 Viewed
  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 53335 (44)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Management and Economics
  6. Advisor(s): Miremadi, Iman
  7. Abstract:
  8. Today, innovation plays an essential role in the economic growth of countries. By evaluating technological capabilities, different approaches have considered important effects of innovation on the economic ability and superiority of countries either directly or indirectly. In recent years, the Global Innovation Index (GII) has been employed as a common framework in this respect. It consists of five components, including “institutions,” “human capital and research,” “infrastructure,” “market sophistication,” and “business sophistication,” as the inputs, and two components, including the “knowledge and technology outputs” and “creative outputs” as the outputs of innovation. The present study primarily aims to determine the effects of these innovation inputs, including technological capabilities, on the innovation outputs to identify the factors with the most significant effects on innovation and technological catch-up based on the income levels of countries. Twelve hypotheses were extracted from the fundamentals of the catch-up theory and literature. Then, the effects of these components on each other in seventy countries during 2013-2019 were evaluated. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed to analyze the data. The results indicated that “human capital and research” is a relatively influential component concerning technological catch-up in countries with upper-middle incomes. Governmental expenses in granting facilities to students and teachers, providing research credits, supporting researchers, and improving universities should be considered as a high-return investment rather than expenses. However, academic-industrial connections and the willingness of the private sector to make use of knowledge workers serve as an important mediator between educational and research expenses and innovation outputs. Furthermore, “business sophistication” has a significantly larger effect on the innovation outputs in high-income countries. The findings also suggest that institutionalization has a low impact on innovative outputs but a large influence on market development. In fact, institutionalization can provide economic and legal security to market actors more than it affects the innovation level
  9. Keywords:
  10. Structural Equations Modeling ; Technological Capabilities ; Technology Catch Up ; Global Innovation Index ; Partial Least Squares (PLS) ; Innovation

 Digital Object List

 Bookmark

No TOC