The effects of r&d investments in the informatics sector on the economic growth: Turkey case study (2006-2016)

In this study, information sector, an important sector in the economy strangeness of developed countries, is discussed and information economy is explained. Here, the importance of the innovation and R & D concepts are involved and examples from the countries with successful application of the innovation based economy are presented. The development of the IT sector in Turkey and the impact of the applied governmental motivations in this concern is examined as well in current research. In the method section of the thesis, an analysis is made to evaluate the effect of R & D investments on the economic growth. Therefore, the data from Turkey and other developed countries are compared based on the IT sector data entries. Accordingly, the following results are obtained from the analysis. Current research was focused on the investigation of an econometric model. Here, the effect of the research and development (R&D) expenditures on the economic growth was examined in 2006 up to 2016. Accordingly, the related variables from 15 countries for the economic growth and patent applications from the World Bank and in the case of the R&D expenditure the variables from the Eurostat were analyzed. Under investigation countries of this research are consisted of Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, China, South Korea, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom. In this study, the effects R&D expenditures on the economic growth of these countries were examined using the panel data analysis approach, through which the hypothesis of the research weren't satisfied. Therefore, robust estimators were utilized and interpreted. As well, the patent application variables, as extracted from the similar researches, have been included in the model to examine the effect of R&D expenditures on the economic growths. As expected, the results imply the positive relationship between the economic growth, R&D expenditures and patent applications. A 1% increase in R & D expenditures increases economic growth by 0.96%. A 1% increase in patent applications increases economic growth by 0.002%. These findings show that the effect of R & D expenditures on economic growth is higher in patent expenditures. As implied from the results, both of the variables have a significant effect on the economic growth of the countries. However, it is clear that the R&D expenditures dominantly affect positively the economic growth in comparison to the corresponding patent applications. Therefore, to provide the efficient development of the IT sector, affecting positively the economic growth of the countries, R&D expenditures should be increased and supported more seriously through government policies which are applied to the private sector.