Is R&D always growth-enhancing? Empirical evidence from the EU countries

Andrzej Kacprzyk () and Iwona Świeczewska

Applied Economics Letters, 2019, vol. 26, issue 2, 163-167

Abstract: This study provides empirical evidence regarding the effects of R&D on economic growth in a panel of 28 European Union (EU) countries over the period 1997–2014. In particular, we investigate whether the impact of business and government R&D stocks on economic growth depends on the country’s distance to the world technology frontier. The main findings are that in the EU (i) there is positive, statistically significant business R&D stock–economic growth nexus in countries that are relatively close to the frontier and (ii) no statistically significant relationship was found to exist between government R&D stock and economic growth. From the policy perspective, the results suggest that designing proper national policies that allow switching from investment-based to innovation-based strategies at appropriate moments may be far more important than a simple call for increase in R&D expenditures and setting common numerical targets for all EU-member states.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13504851.2018.1444257 (text/html)
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:taf:apeclt:v:26:y:2019:i:2:p:163-167

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEL20

DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2018.1444257

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics Letters is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics Letters from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().