Analysis of regional knowledge spillover and its effect on economic growth in the European region

This doctoral thesis examines the impact of knowledge and knowledge spillover on economic growth. In the first part knowledge absorbative capacity of countries which is above threshold level is analised by using panal data techniques via production function. Empirical results demonstrate that an increase in absorbative capacity has positive and statistically significant impact on economic performance of countries. In the second part of the analysis, the effect of knowledge dissemination/spillover on countries' economic performance within European region is analised by using production function approach and panel data. In spite of examine different channels of knowledge spillover one by one these various channels has been collected together and generated knowledge index. The findings show that in a given time period an increase in knowledge dissemination/spillover index has positive and statistically significant impact on economic growth performance of countries. The analysis within the scope of this study aims to enrich previous studies in terms of data set and time dimension. It is foreseen that existing studies will be taken one step further in terms of content by including the new data which has been compiled since 2007.