Does research output cause economic growth or vice versa? Evidence from 34 OECD countries

AbstractThe causal relation between research and economic growth is of particular importance for political support of science and technology as well as for academic purposes. This article revisits the causal relationship between research articles published and economic growth in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD countries for the period 1981-2011, using bootstrap panel causality analysis, which accounts for cross-section dependency and heterogeneity across countries. The article, by the use of the specific method and the choice of the country group, makes a contribution to the existing literature. Our empirical results support unidirectional causality running from research output in terms of total number of articles published to economic growth for the US, Finland, Hungary, and Mexico; the opposite causality from economic growth to research articles published for Canada, France, Italy, New Zealand, the UK, Austria, Israel, and Poland; and no causality for the rest of the countries. Our findings provide important policy implications for research policies and strategies for OECD countries.