The Effect of Education, R&D and ICT on Economic Growth in High Income Countries

This document examines the causal relationship between information and communications technology (ICT), education, research & development (R&D) and economic growth in high income countries using panel data set from 1990 to 2015. We employ panel data set using various tests such as panel unit root test, panel cointegration in order to detect the relationship between the dependent variable (GDP) and independent variables (ED, RD, MCS and IU). The empirical results of the vector error correction model (VECM) show that there exists a unidirectional relation causality from education and mobile cellular telephone to economic growth, from internet users and mobile cellular telephone to research and development and from education to research and development, while bidirectional causality between internet users and economic growth, between research and development and economic growth, between education, internet users and mobile cellular telephone in the short-run. In addition, the results also show that there is a bidirectional relationship between education, internet users and mobile cellular telephone, while there is a unidirectional relationship from internet users to economic growth and research and development and from mobile cellular telephone to economic growth and research and development in the long-run.