Internationalization, the Highly Qualified and the Innovation Output

Abstract

The process of Internationalization strongly influences the developed economies, including the EU, whereas the large scale of international trade in goods is characterized by production with high value added. Based on this, the fabrication of such commodities requires a highly qualified workforce and is very often followed by international patent protection. This paper focuses on the link between the fraction of highly educated with tertiary education and the innovation output, measured by the number of EPO patent applications per million inhabitants. Due to the rising mobility of a highly qualified workforce, we have also tested the correlation between the fraction of tertiary educated foreigners and the innovation output. The aim of the paper is to state whether the higher share of a highly qualified workforce and the fraction of highly qualified foreigners correlate with innovation activities within the EU Member States. Given the number of EU Member States, the EU macro-regions division based on the social models of Esping-Andersen (1990), Sapir (2005), as well as Dolwik and Martin (2014) will be applied.