Investigation on the Impact of Knowledge on Economic Growth of Iran's Provinces

Abstract

The role and importance of knowledge in economic growth has been considered since the second half of the twentieth century. As of 1980s, knowledge entered the production function as an endogenous and determining variable. By the time that knowledge, innovation and new technologies became of value; broad studies were carried out in order to investigate the role and impact of these variables on economic growth, both at national and regional (regions within the national borders) levels. Economic researchers have tried to explain the disparities in economic growth of regions according to the differences in knowledge share and innovation. Through the production and publication of financial accounts of provinces in Iran since 1990, the pathway for such studies has been smoothed and the ground has been prepared for investigating the role and impact of knowledge and innovation on economic growth of different provinces and their diversity in economic growth. In the present article, the effects of knowledge variables (including specialized labor, R&D employees and value-added of high-tech sectors) have been surveyed alongside with two traditional variables of labor and capital on economic growth of Iran provinces during years 1990-2011 and the economic growth model has been estimated through this approach. The results of model estimation using stochastic effects method reveal that specialized labor growth rate has the highest effect on economic growth of provinces, by a coefficient equal to 2.05. The growth rates of capital per capita, and high-tech and intermediate-tech industries (per employee) have the coefficients of 0.89 and 0.19, respectively.

Keywords

• endogenous growth
• regional economics
• convergence
• growth accounting