Research, technological change and financial liberalization in South Korea

Drawing on the recent developments in innovation-based growth models that emphasize the importance of financial factors and R&D activity, this paper explores the impact of research efforts and financial sector reforms on inventive activity, using Korea as the case study. Based on time series data over the period 1967-2005, the results consistently show that the implementation of a series of financial liberalization policies is strongly associated with a higher rate of knowledge generation. They also show that R&D intensity has a significant positive influence on ideas production, providing some support for the Schumpeterian endogenous growth framework. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.