Sources of productivity change of human resources in science and technology

Science and technology plays a key role in a national competitiveness. Traditional analysis of national competitiveness help to understand national competitive advantages, but such analysis do not focus on the advantages derived from technology applications. Equally crucial for the survival and g...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Chou, Ying-Chyi, Yen, Hsin-Yi
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Language:English
Published: 2007
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Online Access:http://repo.uum.edu.my/2578/1/Ying-Chyi_Chou.pdf
http://repo.uum.edu.my/2578/
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Summary:Science and technology plays a key role in a national competitiveness. Traditional analysis of national competitiveness help to understand national competitive advantages, but such analysis do not focus on the advantages derived from technology applications. Equally crucial for the survival and growth of a nation’s technology are human resources in science and technology (HRST). Nations are confronting challenges of nurturing HRST and utilizing its HRST more effectively. Therefore, evaluating the HRST of each nation provides key information. All nations should to refocus competitive strategies of HRST towards increasing productive efficiency or productivity growth. This paper analyzes the evolution of the HRST’s productivity change and pattern in a sample of 39 countries that are evaluated in the 2007 The World Competitiveness Yearbook published by IMD. The analysis is based on data envelopment analysis (DEA) which is a mathematical programming approach. We estimate Malmquist productivity indexes and decompose them into four sources of productivity change. The result suggests that technical change of HRST explain most of the productivity growth observed during the period. The contribution of efficiency change to productivity growth is less.