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Impacts of Universities in Different Stages of Economic Development

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Abstract

During the past two centuries, universities have evolved from being “accumulators” of knowledge, largely separated from society, to “knowledge hubs,” which are deeply embedded in systems of innovation and take on the role of instigating economic and social development. Despite economic, social, and institutional disparities, university authorities, policymakers, and academics are focusing their attention on the potential of universities to create innovative environments and contribute to the knowledge-based economic development of countries and regions. Due to the lack of data, almost all extant empirical studies have analyzed the contribution of university research mission on developed regions (e.g., USA, UK, and the Netherlands). The aim of this paper is to provide evidence of the impact of three university missions on the economic development of countries at different stages, namely the factor-, efficiency-, and innovation-driven stages. Adopting the endogenous growth theory, our proposed model was tested using data from 77 countries with a linear regression model. Our main results show that: (i) the human capital generated by universities is the most important predictor of economic development at all stages; (ii) the university research activity is only evidenced at the efficiency-driven and innovation-driven stages; and (ii) the outcome of the entrepreneurial mission of universities is only positively related to gross domestic product (GDP) in innovation-driven economies. Some relevant implications for policymakers, university managers, and society, as well as best practices emerge from this research.

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Notes

  1. The concept of stages of development, as proposed by Porter (1990) and adapted by the authors of the Global Competitiveness Report (Sala-i-Martin and Schwab 2011), is useful to differentiate countries according to their level of economic development and their institutional environment.

  2. For the purposes of our study, we used the countries’ stages of economic development provided in the Global Competitiveness Report 2011–2012 (Sala-i-Martin and Schwab 2011). Countries that were at one of two transition stages were classified in the previous main stage.

  3. Collinearity statistics can be obtained upon request.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and feedback that have helped shape this paper. Radzivon Marozau expresses his gratitude to the Erasmus Mundus BMU-MID program for the financial support. David Urbano acknowledges the financial support from projects ECO2013-44027-P (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) and 2014-SGR-1626 (Economy and Knowledge Department—Catalan Government–).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Deusto Business School, University of Deusto, Camino de Mundaiz, 50, 20012, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain

    Radzivon Marozau & Maribel Guerrero

  2. School of Business and Management of Technology, Belarusian State University, Moskovskaya st., 5, 220007, Minsk, Belarus

    Radzivon Marozau

  3. Department of Business, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Edifici B, 08193, Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès), Barcelona, Spain

    David Urbano

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  1. Radzivon Marozau
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Correspondence to Maribel Guerrero.

Annex 1

Annex 1

Table 6

Table 6 Sampled countries
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Marozau, R., Guerrero, M. & Urbano, D. Impacts of Universities in Different Stages of Economic Development. J Knowl Econ 12, 1–21 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-016-0359-7

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