Replication data for: Does governance efficiency matter for national innovative capacity? One tale from different countries

Various factors possibly impact on national innovative capacity. Governments are makers and implementers of national innovative policies, and then does its governance efficiency matter for the innovation of a country? Up to now, empirical evidence about the relationship between governance efficiency and national innovative capacity is still inadequate. To fill this research gap, the authors, based on the application of machine learning technique to select valid variables and the panel data of 117 countries from 1995 to 2015, conduct analysis with different models. The results of these different models show that governance efficiency has a significant and positive impact with stability and reliability on innovation. In addition, the authors divide the 117 countries into 3 regions in accordance with economic development and geographic proximity, finding that governance efficiencies of different regions have heterogeneity but positive impact on national innovative capacity. Finally, potential policy implications are discussed

Replication Data for Does Democracy Cause Innovation?An Empirical Test of the Popper Hypothesis

Here is the data used in the paper titled "Does democracy cause innovation? An empirical study of the Popper Hypothesis". Democratic countries produce higher levels of innovation than autocratic ones, but does democratization itself lead to innovation growth either in the short or in the long run? The existing literature has extensively examined the relationship between democracy and growth, but seldom explored the effect of democracy on innovation, which might be an important channel through which democracy contributes to economic growth. This article aims to fill this gap and contributes to the long-standing debate on the relationship between democracy and innovation by offering empirical evidence based on a dataset covering 156 countries between the year 1964 and 2010. The results from difference-in-difference method show that democracy itself has no direct positive effect on innovation measured with patent counts, patent citations and patent originality

Internet Penetration and National Innovation Capacities: Evidence from Worldwide Panel Data Analysis

The Internet and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has profoundly reshaped world development and our life style. Despite that there are amounts of literature concerning with the effects of ICTs on development in different fields, the roles of ICTs in innovation are less explored. To fill this gap, this paper investigates the effect of the Internet penetration on national innovation using a cross-national panel data of 157 countries from 1995 to 2014. We find that the Internet penetration has a significant but decreasing promotion effect on innovation, which is robust to various model specifications and the changes in variable measures. A one-year lagged effect is also observed. Estimation with the panel data threshold effect model further shows that even if the effects of the Internet penetration on innovation can bypass the limitations of a low level of R&D expenditure, education, urbanization and freedom of the press, it cannot bypass the limitations of population density. Our study provides evidence on promoting national innovation especially for developing countries through ICTs and reinforces the importance of geographic proximity for innovation in the Internet age

Replication data for : How (when) does technological innovation improve government effectiveness? An empirical investigation with cross-national evidence

This dataset contains all of the programs and the unrestricted data used for our research: How to understand the impacts of government effectiveness (GE) on technological innovation has received full attention. But in turn, it is still a puzzle how technological innovation promotes GE. With the intention of providing rigorous empirical evidence to fill the gap, authors efficiently select variables based on novel machine learning and analyze the influence mechanism of technological innovation on GE through different models using panel data from global countries over 20 years. The investigation carried out has revealed that the relationship between technological innovation and GE is not a simple linear relation but a more complicated inverted U-shaped relation. We also distinguish the impacts of technological innovation on GE in countries with diverse democratic and developing levels. This pioneer work has provided new indicators to our understanding of innovation diffusion and determinants of GE

Replication Data for: Democratization and Gini index: Panel data analysis based on random forest method

The mechanism for the association between democratic development and the wealth gap has always been the focus of political and economic research, yet with no consistent conclusion. The reasons for that often are, 1) challenges to generalize the results obtained from analyzing a single country’s time series studies or multinational cross-section data analysis, and 2) deviations in research results caused by missing values or variable selection in panel data analysis. When it comes to the latter one, there are two factors contribute to it. One is that the accuracy of estimation is interfered with the presence of missing values in variables, another is that subjective discretion that must be exercised to select suitable proxies amongst many candidates, which are likely to cause variable selection bias. In order to solve these problems, this study is the pioneeringly research to utilize the machine learning method to interpolate missing values efficiently through the random forest model in this topic, and effectively analyzed cross-country data from 151 countries covering the period 1993–2017. Since this paper measures the importance of different variables to the dependent variable, more appropriate and important variables could be selected to construct a complete regression model. Results from different models come to a consensus that the promotion of democracy can significantly narrow the gap between the rich and the poor, with marginally decreasing effect with respect to wealth. In addition, the study finds out that this mechanism exists only in non-colonial nations or presidential states. Finally, this paper discusses the potential theoretical and policy implications of results

The economic impact of anti-corruption campaigns: New materials for new research agendas in China

Corruption plagues both developed and developing countries. It is a serious obstacle to China’s development that is too perilous to ignore. However, conducting research on corruption, which is characterised as being the most secretive type of behaviour, is particularly difficult. Applying the vector autoregressive model (VAR) to consecutive 36-month data, the authors analyse empirically the corruption status quo and its impact in China. The authors discover short-term negative impacts of the current anti-corruption campaign in China on the economic growth of its state-owned industries, while any positive effects, e.g. improved quality of economic growth, cannot be demonstrated. The objective data used reduce significantly the confusion surrounding traditional (anti-)corruption studies, which have relied heavily on survey data or subjective evaluation.</p

Replication Data for: Reversing the U: new evidence on the Internet and democracy

This dataset contains all of the programs and the unrestricted data used for our research:Reversing the U: new evidence on the Internet and democracy. The relationship between the internet and democratic developments has long been a controversial topic, hampered in part by the lack of empirical evidence. This study is undertaken to investigate the effects of Internet penetration on democratization based on the panel data of 125 countries gathered from 1993 to 2014. The authors apply machine learning method (i.e. random forest) to effectively screen the variables that are more closely related to democracy. The results of different estimation models reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between Internet penetration and democratization, and also distinguish the impacts of the Internet on advanced and less advanced democracies. Then, we arrive at the conclusion that Internet penetration brings a late-starting advantage in the development of democracy for less advanced democracies. These conclusions are further confirmed by robust test

Replication data for: National Innovative Capacity as Internet Penetration: Worldwide Evidence for Innovation Development through ICTs

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) and innovation have profoundly reshaped and promoted global development. Although there are many works that have examined the direct effects of ICTs on national development in the fields of economics, society and politics, the important role played by ICTs in national innovation capacity has been less widely explored from an empirical standpoint. This paper investigates the effect of Internet penetration on national innovation development, based on cross-national panel data from 156 countries between 1995 and 2014. We find that Internet penetration has a significant but decreasing promotional effect on innovation, and this is robust to various models and variable measures. A one-year lagged effect between Internet penetration and innovation is also observed. The results show significant interactive effects between levels of democracy (regime types), Internet penetration and innovation. The paper concludes with an overview of the potential policy implications of these findings

Online appendix and replication data for: The Economic Impact of Anti-corruption Campaigns: New Materials for New Research Agendas in China

This dataset contains all of the online appendix, the programs and the unrestricted data used for our research: Online appendix and replication data for: The Economic Impact of Anti-corruption Campaigns: New Materials for New Research Agendas in China. Corruption plagues both developed and developing countries. It is a serious obstacle to China’s development that is too perilous to ignore. However, studying corruption, which is characterised as being the most secretive type of behaviour, is particularly difficult. Applying the vector autoregressive model (VAR) to consecutive 36-month data, the authors analyse empirically the corruption status quo and its impact in China. The authors discover short-term negative impact of the current anti-corruption campaign in China on the economic growth of its state-owned industries, while any positive effect, e.g. improved quality of economic growth, cannot be demonstrated. The objective data used reduce significantly the confusion surrounding traditional (anti-)corruption studies, which have relied heavily on survey data or subjective evaluation

Supplement_2 - Reversing the U: New Evidence on the Internet and Democracy Relationship

<p>Supplement_2 for Reversing the U: New Evidence on the Internet and Democracy Relationship by Leizhen Zang, Feng Xiong, and Yanyan Gao in Social Science Computer Review</p