Migration, Innovation and Growth in the European Union

Authors

  • Elena Sinoi

Keywords:

PhD foreign students, Innovation, R&D expenditures, European countries

Abstract

In today's globalised world, international migration represents one of the most important topics of the 21st century, with diverse effects on a country's economic, political, and social dimensions. Depending on how well government actors succeed to manage these flows, the positive effects can be further boosted, while the adverse effects can be diminished (for both receiving and sending countries). A great deal of attention must be paid to policy strategies that foster domestic investments and innovation, as they represent a meaningful engine of economic growth, influencing positively and significantly the income in the long run. This research aims to evaluate the influence of human capital (with a focus on foreign human resources), innovation activities and investments (finance and support) on per capita economic growth (proxied by GDP per capita), in the case of all the European Union countries. The timeframe is between 2014 and 2021. For the econometric analysis of the panel data, we used Fixed-Effects regression and System GMM approach (both short-run and long-run estimations). The econometric results emphasise the positive and statistically significant effects (both on short-run and long-run) of foreign PhD students, patent applications, resource productivity, employment in innovative enterprises and tertiary educated people on per capita economic growth. The coefficients of the independent variables were higher in the long run than in the short run. Therefore, in the long run, a one standard deviation improvement in variables: foreign PhD students and patent applications lead to a 0.014-fold, respectively 0.088-fold increase in the logarithm GDP per capita.

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Published

2022-05-14

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How to Cite

Migration, Innovation and Growth in the European Union. (2022). Timisoara Journal of Economics and Business, 14(2), 159-179. https://www.tjeb.ro/index.php/tjeb/article/view/348