Comparative analysis of the impact of innovation on global competitiveness: An application on EU countries under an innovative perspective

The common view of economic researchers and policy makers is that countries' innovation capacity and ability is an important factor in their competitiveness and economic growth. Because the differences between countries and regions in the context of the speed of development and spread of innovations, and other problems that arise in the process, emphasize the importance of innovation policies more. In order for policy makers to design effective innovation policies, there is a need for research that tries to understand the competitiveness of countries and therefore the factors and environments that affect it. The aim of this study is to create a model that will contribute within the appropriate theoretical framework and under an innovative perspective. The research is to determine whether the main innovation factors are effective on the competitiveness of the countries or which factors are effective and whether these determinants make a difference between the European Union countries, which are in the category of developed countries but in which there are regional differences, and thus the process is similar or It aims to reveal whether it has different effects. In the research, panel data analysis was conducted for the 2000-2019 period and EU28 countries. According to the findings of the models estimated with the Driscoll-Kraay resistance estimator, the effect of innovation on global competitiveness for the EU15 and EU13 country groups was found to be positive and significant only for the variables of human capital and patent numbers. Other variables of research expenditures and number of researchers representing innovation were not found to be statistically significant. When we compare both groups of countries, it is concluded that the countries belonging to the EU13 group increase their human capital and the number of patents more, which will increase their global competitiveness more than the EU15 countries.