An Empirical Analysis about Technological Development and Innovation Indicators

Abstract

Researches on technological development and innovation indicators that are used as different criteria for measurement such as multivariate statistics methods have increased rapidly in the field of social sciences since 1990s. The concept of indicators is an interesting field of science, which are used to inform us about things that are difficult to measure. Indicators for technology development and innovation may be defined as statistics, which measure quantifiable aspects of technological development and innovation creation. In this research, indicators help us to describe technological development and innovation clearly and enable us to have a better understanding of the impact of policies and programs on technological development and innovation and on the society and the economy in general. The objective of the present paper is to examine whether technological development indicators, which are used as a proxy for economic growth, innovation and the development level of countries, are influenced by the used variables in this analysis. The study is conducted by using a very large data set. It covers a monthly time period of 1996 and 2011. The study includes a variety of variables such as research and development expenditure (RDE), high-technology exports (HTE), long-term unemployment (LTU), patent applications-residents (PA), patent applications-nonresidents (PAF), health expenditure (HE), GNI per capita (PPP), share of women employed in the non-agricultural sector (SWE), stocks traded (ST), internet users (IU), scientific and technical journal articles (STJ). The empirical results which were obtained by using MDS (Multidimensional Scaling) and HCA (Hierarchical Cluster Analysis) methods suggest that the variables of RDE, PA, HE, PPP, SWE, IU and STJ have significant impacts on technological development and innovation and should be reviewed all together.