Research publications and economic growth in South Africa: an empirical investigation

Nicholas Odhiambo and Lydia Ntenga

International Journal of Social Economics, 2016, vol. 43, issue 7, 662-675

Abstract: Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to examine the causal relationship between research publications and economic growth – using time-series data from South Africa. The paper attempts to answer two critical questions: is there a long-run relationship between research publications and economic growth in South Africa? Do research publications from South African researchers Granger-cause economic growth? Design/methodology/approach - – Unlike some of the previous studies, the current paper uses a trivariate ECM-based Granger-causality model to examine this linkage. Specifically, the study incorporates education as an intermittent variable between research and economic growth. In addition, the paper uses the recently developed autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL)-bounds testing procedure, which has numerous advantages, especially when the sample size is small. Findings - – The results of this study show that there is a long-run relationship between research publications and economic growth in South Africa. The results also show that there is a distinct causal flow from research publications to economic growth in South Africa. This applies both in the short-run and in the long-run. Other results also show that: there is a short-run bidirectional causality between research publications and education; and there is a short-run bi-directional causality between education and economic growth, but a long-run unidirectional causal flow from education to economic growth. Practical implications - – The findings of this paper underscore the crucial role that research plays in economic growth and development. Overall, the findings of this study show that research in South Africa is pro-growth. This implies that the recent significant increase in government expenditure on research and innovation, which is aimed at increasing the country’s scientific research outputs, is likely to pay off. Originality/value - – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first of its kind to examine in detail the dynamic causal relationship between research outputs and economic growth in South Africa – using the recently developed ARDL-bounds testing approach within a trivariate setting.

Keywords: Education; Sustainable development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:ijsepp:v:43:y:2016:i:7:p:662-675

DOI: 10.1108/IJSE-05-2014-0103

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Social Economics is currently edited by Professor Terence Garrett

More articles in International Journal of Social Economics from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().