The Relationship between Pro-Innovation Factors and the Performance of the European Union Member States and their Regions

Abstract

The strategic priority of the European Union is research, development and innovation, as has been explicitly stated by its representatives since 2000. However, the reality of supporting research and development, innovation and overall economic performance at the threshold of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is different. Europe is significantly losing its global share in wealth creation. Therefore, the objective of the article is to identify relationships between the economic performance and the pro-innovation factors, which represents intensity of research and development at the level of national economy of the EU Member States. At their regional level, NUTS 2, the economic performance is compared with the pro-innovation factors, which are represented on the one hand as the proportion of employed persons with higher education or persons working in the field of science and technology, and on the other hand as the proportion of persons employed in the high-tech sector. Research has shown that the contribution of R&D spending to economic performance is not invariant, that there is probably a certain degree of saturation for which the increase in these expenditures is associated with lower increases in economic performance in the country. The results of the regional analysis can be used to infer the higher importance of persons employed in research and university-educated workers for the country's economic performance compared to the share of those employed in the high-tech sector.

The Impact of Interplay between Formal and Informal Institutions on Innovation Performance: Evidence from CEECs

“…Researchers have until now focused on: i) the regional innovation process (Rodriguez, 2014); ii) the innovation capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) (Dukic et al, 2015) or industrial structure in innovation capacity (Zdrazil et al, 2016); iii) the innovation ecosystem (Jucevicius et al, 2016); iv) open innovation policies (Sekliuckiene et al, 2016); v) the innovation environment and innovation activities of strong, moderate or modest innovators among CEECs (Prokop & Stejskal, 2017); vi) innovative SMEs (Belas et al, 2017); vii) pro-innovation factors (Kraftova & Kraft, 2018); viii) the impact of human resources, research networks, the institutional environment, public or private expenditures on research and development (European Commission, 2019a); or ix) measuring the innovation performance of developed and developing regions (Ghazinoory et al, 2014). Others focused on confirming the impact of formal or informal institutions on innovation performance in various countries.…”

Technological Innovation in the Food Industry: A Bibliometric Analysis

“…The evidence supports that the company's returns and growth depend on its ability to innovate (Triguero et al, 2013). Examining the link between economic performance and innovation is not a new area of research; on the contrary, this relationship is considered very strategic (Kraftova & Kraft, 2018).…”

Fiscal Policy, Factors of Endogenous Growth and Dynamics of Slovenian Exports

“…In the aftermath of the financial and economic crisis, since October 2008, the synthesis between neo-Schumpeterian and Keynesian policies has shown itself at least on a practical level. According to Kraftova & Kraft (2018), innovation and knowledge-based activity become a major force in economic development, and technology policy becomes an inevitable and important part of a country's fiscal or regional policy.…”

“…In 2010, Slovenia was ranked among the strong innovators according to the European Commission typology (European Commission -Innovation Union Scoreboard, 2015). By the EU standards and mostly financed by the EU funds in its most intensive development policy management, the general government expenditure ratio in GDP reached between 50 % and 60 %, approaching that of the Scandinavian countries (Kraftova & Kraft, 2018;Halaskova & Halaskova, 2017). The relative success of Slovenia's transition to a market economy at the beginning of the 1990s, as well as the success of Slovenia's integration into the EU and the euro area, is reflected by population growth.…”