Interrelationships among the elements of national innovation systems: A statistical evaluation

An obstacle often faced by countries in attempting to improve the standard of living of their people and the productivity of their economic base is a low level of technological development. At the national level, such a problem may be conceptualized in the form of a National Innovative System (NIS), which represents a country's involvement in innovative activity. It is the purpose of this paper to develop a comprehensive NIS model through the identification of elements which characterize a country's NIS and of the interrelationships embedded in each individual system. The point of departure is to treat the NIS as any other sector of the economy. As a result, its various elements are delineated according to their role within the NIS, as inputs, outputs, moderators or as a measure of productivity. The nature of the interrelationships is assessed through a structural equations model linking the various elements. It is shown that substantial commonalities exist among the basic element of the various NISs, notwithstanding large differences in technology development strategies that exist across countries and the wide disparity between levels of development of each country in the sample.