Scientific output: labor or capital intensive? An analysis for selected countries

Abstract

Scientific research contributes to sustainable economic growth environments. Hence, policy-makers should understand how the different inputs-namely labor and capital-are related to a country's scientific output. This paper addresses this issue by estimating output elasticities for labor and capital using a panel of 31 countries in nine years. Due to the nature of scientific output, we also use spatial econometric models to take into account the spillover effects from knowledge produced as well as labor and capital. The results show that capital elasticity is closer to the labor elasticity. The results suggest a decreasing return to scale production of scientific output. The spatial model points to negative spillovers from capital expenditure and no spillovers from labor or the scientific output.

Analysis of the Scientific Productivity and Technical Efficiency of Chilean Universities

“…These results are similar to those presented by Mueller (2016), which determines financial resources as a factor of greater scientific production incidence. In contrast, the parameters determined in studies at the country level carried out by Erfanian and Ferreira (2017) determine that the number of researchers and their quality has a greater effect on academic scientific productivity than financial or operational resources.…”

“…Their results mention that the elasticity of investment in R&D is more relevant than the number of researchers in scientific productivity. Erfanian and Ferreira (2017) used the Cobb-Douglas function to model scientific production using a balanced panel of thirty-one countries and nine years to estimate the elasticities of the financial resources used by researchers on their contributions in scientific production. The authors determine that both factors contribute in a similar way to the scientific production of the countries under study.…”

“…The production of scientific literature has increased significantly in recent decades. This, as a result of the role that various studies assign to scientific progress, technology and investment in human capital in the economic development of countries; all of them understood as relevant factors to the growth of the economies (Fernandez-Cano, Torralbo, & Vallejo, 2004;Wong, 2019;Barro, 1990Barro, , 2001Erfanian & B. Ferreira Neto, 2017;Gemmell, 2010;Mueller, 2016, Solarin & Yen, 2016.…”

Can scientific productivity impact the economic complexity of countries?

“…An examination of the relationship between economic complexity (Hidalgo and Hausmann 2009) and scientific productivity (Jaffe et al 2013) was the aim of this work. As science and wealth have always been connected (Jaffe 2009;Erfanian and Neto 2017), those analyses that are intended to unveil how this relationship works are not only a 1 3…”

E-profiling R&D involvement/earnings of researchers: a G2E tool for performance management at CSIR–NML

“…The best possible way to enhance self-sustainability of the laboratory through industrial earnings was to (1) increase industrial funding/earnings by increasing industrial research and development (R&D) Projects and (2) increase the development and transfer of the R&D outputs, namely, Know–how, Technologies and Intellectual Property (Patents, Copyrights) . The public sector R&D laboratories are funded by the tax payer's money and are expected to produce new technological solutions for the development of Science and Technology in the country (Thornhill, 2006; Erfanian and Neto, 2017). Usually, the large-scale industries consume a large extent of technologies produced by the public sector R&D and provide a large amount of funding for new R&D explorations as well (Scherer, 1982; Cohen et al , 2002).…”