Investigation of innovation as a condition for the country's level of economic complexity: an international Empirical approach

Abstract

This study assessed how national innovation systems (NIS) conditioning pillars influence countries' economic complexity levels. To this end, multivariate statistical analysis was applied, with the multiple linear regression technique, to the data collected from the Global Innovation Index (GII) and Economic Complexity Index (ECI) bases, from 112 different countries, with the year 2020 as reference. As a result, there was a significant and positive relationship between the Infrastructure and Business Sophistication pillars. In contrast, the Institutions, Human Capital, and Research and Market Sophistication pillars did not directly influence the ECI. This study contributes to the literature by exploring, in an objective way (quantitative study), a field of investigation of the pillars of national innovation that impact the economic complexity of nations and indicates paths to be followed by actors who participate in the dynamics of national innovation systems to create a national plan that enables more significant levels of economic complexity and consequent development. JEL code: C21, C43, O31, O38, O57