Transformation of Knowledge into Economic Value in Higher Education and Global Competitiveness: A Panel Causality Analysis on OECD Countries

Entrepreneurial and innovative higher education institutions of the 21st century have become the driving forces of social development, economic growth and global competitiveness by improving human capital through the educational and instructional services they offer, producing qualified scientific information through the scientific research they conduct and by fulfilling an important responsibility in the solution of social problems. In the current study, the effect of higher education on global competition in the context of the transformation of knowledge into economic value in OECD countries was analyzed with the Granger Panel Causality Test. In the application part, a panel data set was created with the data collected from 25 OECD countries for which data were available for the period 2006-2017. The Global Competitiveness Index variable was taken as the basis to reveal the global competitiveness of the countries included in the analysis. In order to reveal the status of their higher education, the gross schooling rate in higher education, the employment rate of the population with higher education, public expenditures on higher education, the quality of the education system, the quality of scientific research institutions, the performance of scientific publications, the R&D expenditures made by higher education and the university-industry cooperation variables were taken as the basis. As a result of the application, it was determined that each variable representing higher education has a bilateral causality relationship in the short term with the Global Competitiveness Index representing global competition.