Economic, linguistic, and political factors in the scientific productivity of countries

This paper examines the influence of economic, linguistic, and political factors in the scientific productivity of countries across selected scientific disciplines. Using a negative binomial regression model, I show that the effect of these determinants is contingent upon the scientific field under analysis. The only variable that exerts a positive and significant effect across all disciplines is the size of the economy. The linguistic variable only has a positive influence in the social sciences as well as in medicine and agricultural sciences. In addition, it is also demonstrated that the degree of political authoritarianism has a negative and statistically significant effect in some of the selected fields.