A measurement instrument of cognitive economics in the BRICS countries

Abstract

The paper envisages the key features of the cognitive economics in the BRICS countries. Due to their substantial impact on the development of the world economics, it is necessary to investigate the cognitive processes in these countries. The distinctive feature of the current world economy is the quality transformation of its technological basis that forms global challenges for the future world economic development. The essence of this transformation is to strengthen cognitive processes: emergence of robots, commercial spread of artificial intelligence technologies, changes in labor skills, etc. These quality changes lead to the formation of a new stage of economics — cognitive economics. As a sphere of scientific research, cognitive economics includes three main domains: intellectual systems, knowledge management, and cognitive technologies. Despite the fact that all these phenomena are present in the economy of each country there is no suitable instrument that can measure cognitive processes at the country level. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate a measurement tool for evaluating the level of cognitivization in the BRICS countries. Taking into account this goal, the authors developed an aggregated index based on a generalized principal component analysis. As a result, the main parameters that make the greatest contribution to the cognitive index were identified. Comparison at the country level shows that the first sub-index has more weight connected with the human capital of the countries. As for R&D and ICT infrastructure — the second and third sub-indices — the situation in the BRICS countries is almost the same. The obvious conclusions of the monitoring are that cognitive economics in the BRICS countries has a chance to intensify their economic development and slash the backlog with the developed countries.