Research and Development (R&D) is one of the most important variables that affect the country’s economic growth and development through increasing the technology capabilities, enlargement of resource base and promoting in the capability of resource utilization. Countries that innovate by conducting R&D activities always have high economic growth and many researchers emphasized this prominent role of the R&D on economic growth in numerous studies. This study contributes in two ways to this stream of research. Providing new estimates of the effect of R&D expenditures on economic growth is the first contribution to literature. On the other hand, there are different types of R&D expenditures and each of them has different magnitude on the economic growth. Therefore, this study provides evidences about the magnitudes of R&D expenditures. The effect of different types of R&D expenditures on economic growth for the selected OECD countries is examined in this study by utilizing from GMM framework using the data belonging the period of 2003-2014. Income and different R&D expenditure data used to analyze that obtained from OECD Stat. As a conclusion, it is found that all of the R&D expenditures have positive and significant effect on economic growth in selected OECD countries but magnitudes are various. Therefore, policy makers should design the R&D stimulation policies depending on the characteristics of the countries. Accordingly, countries must allocate more resources to different types R&D expenditure for achieving sustainable rate of growth.

The sharp increase in commodity prices since 2000s has important effects on many economic variables. Especially the upward trend in commodity prices had substantial effects on stock prices. The literature has continuing and growing interest to the dynamics of commodity price and their significant impact on economic and financial developments. There is growing evidence that commodity prices, stock prices moved together, and that the correlations between them have increased. Many studies investigated the interaction between stock prices and real and commodity prices and find strong interaction for developed countries. However, the effect of the commodity prices on stock markets in relatively less investigated for ECA countries. The purpose of this study is to investigate the long-run relationship between commodity prices and stock prices in ECA countries can by using a panel cointegration test.

Corruption, defined as “the misuse of public power for private benefit.” The World Bank describes corruption as one of the greatest obstacles to economic and social development. It undermines development by distorting the rule of law and weakening the institutional foundation on which economic performance depends. In past decades, many theoretical and empirical studies have presented corruption hinders investment, reduces economic growth, restricts trade, distorts government expenditures and strengthens the underground economy. In addition, they have shown a strong connection between corruption and poverty and income inequality. On the other hand, the literature on corruption points to the conclusion that corruption by itself does not lead to poverty. Rather, corruption has direct consequences on economic and governance factors, intermediaries that in turn produce poverty. Although corruption is seen in many countries in the world, it is higher and widespread in developing countries. This study investigates relation between corruption, poverty, and economic performance by using a panel consisting of countries in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia countries. It was shown that corruption affected directly economic performance and low economic performance leads to poverty. Additionally, results imply that rules against corruption could affect economic growth indirectly through their impact on the level of corruption.

Unemployment is one of the most important and unfinished debates in the economic literature and every decade witnessed a crisis that created unemployment. Especially youth and long-term unemployment rates of the countries are very high and policymakers are focusing their interest on the unemployment problems. On the other hand, the impact of digitalisation is the most cited issue of the last decade in economic discussions. Especially, due to the impact of technological advancements, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) became the main keyword of future discussions. Advances in automation by using the increasing capability of AI changed the direction of the labor market by changing the quantity and type of jobs. The increasing capability of automation with AI turned the robots to cobots and leads to Industry 5.0 as a new industrial revolution. This study aims to explore the effects of AI in Industry 5.0 concept on unemployment.

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