The Impact of Research and Development on Productivity: Case of Turkey

Abstract

Productivity is one of the major research topics in economic literature because of the importance of sustainable development and growth for the countries. Besides, many of the theories stated that technology is the major source of productivity growth in the long run. Especially the productivity acceleration of the countries draw the attention of the researchers after the 90’s due to the changes in the technology. Also, these changes expanded the productivity gap between countries in the consequences of changing growth pattern and increasing the size and structure of the economy. Therefore understanding the linkage between research and development and productivity becomes the most important research topic in the economic literature. Due to this importance analyzing the characteristics of productivity become an important issue for the policymakers for setting new policies. By virtue of the growing importance of understanding productivity changes of countries, the aim of this paper is to investigate the interaction between the research and development spending and productivity for Turkey. We used various types of research and development spending and productivity indicators to estimate this linkage using data for the last three decades. The importance of this paper is to clarify the effect of research and development impact on the productivity of Turkey. The results of this paper will enlighten the details of the underlying variables that affect productivity.