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The paper deals with the potential relationship between higher education and entrepreneurial activities. Universities and other higher education institutions could be seen as boosting entrepreneurship in the region. University graduates could be more often involved in starting up a new business and the university itself could commercialize their innovations by creating academic spin-off companies. The paper aims to examine the potential effect of higher education on the probability of starting a business as well as its further success. Based on the data for 40 EU and non-EU countries, retrieved from a Eurobarometer survey, we conducted probit and IV probit regressions. These have tested the assumed relationship between higher education and entrepreneurial activities. Our results strongly suggest that higher education can often be very beneficial for starting up a new business and this seems to be one of the factors determining the success of new businesses. Furthermore, those respondents who attended courses related to entrepreneurship appear to be more active in starting-up a business and this seems to be also positively correlated with the company's future success. Interestingly, university graduates from Brazil, Portugal and India in particular, tend to appreciate the role that their universities have played in acquiring the skills to enable them to run a business.

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The main aim of this article is to empirically verify the relationship between research and development (R&D) expenditures, innovation, and economic growth. Based on the correlation analysis, we examine the interdependencies between selected indicators. We have found that countries with an increase in innovation performance over the past years mostly experienced a higher economic growth in the year 2012.  Countries with higher research and development expenditures have not only more researchers, but as well more patents registration. Subsequently, the relationship between R&D expenditures and economic growth is examined based on econometric regression model of the panel data.  Input data used in the regression covers EU countries between the years 1999 and 2011.  Our results suggest the existence of positive effect of lagged R&D expenditures on economic growth in these countries. We have also identified positive impact of the flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) in this model, which could be related to mechanism of technology diffusion across the countries.

Abstract. The paper deals with the problem of innovation support and economic development at the regional level. The innovation potential still differs significantly among the EU regions. Perhaps the key factor determining innovation potential and performance of a region is R&D expenditure. The main aim of the paper is to test the potential relationship between gross domestic expenditure on R&D and economic development of the regions. Our dataset consists of the data on the regions of four Visegrad countries during the period of 2001-2014. We assume the existence of non-linear relationship and expect that R&D expenditures are significantly lower in less developed regions. Using the panel Granger causality and panel regression analysis based on these data, we provide insight into the potential relationship between regional economic development measured in terms of GDP per capita and investments in R&D controlling for the number of R&D employees. Our results strongly suggest that higher regional GDP per capita is associated with higher regional gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) per inhabitant. GERD per capita appears to be exponentially rising with regional GDP per capita. We have also found significant regional disparities in terms of innovation performance.

Background: Transfer of knowledge from academia to business is one of the crucial issues for creating innovation. Creation of university spin-offs could significantly improve this transfer. Objectives: The main scientific aim is to examine the differences between universities in European countries and identify factors affecting the probability of creating the university spin-off. The paper is also focused on the differences in the specialization and financial sources of universities. Methods/Approach: We compare selected indicators for higher education institutions in European countries and examine potential determinants affecting the probability of academic spin-off formation. With respect to the main aim, the logit and probit regression analyses have been used. Results: Our results show that the creation of spin-offs is typical on the one hand for highly specialized universities or on the other hand for universities with a wide variety of study programs. They should also have an optimum number of doctoral students and have mostly less funding from tuition fees. Conclusions: Several indicators appear to play an important role in the formation of university spin-off. These indicators are the level of specialization, the share of tuition fees in the University budget, and the share of Ph.D. and foreign students.