Abstract :
In international economic theory, nations ‘competitiveness power is measured using different variables including wages, exchange rate and productivity. To that extend World Economic Forum contributes gathering data by constructing annual Global Competitiveness Index. According to World Economic Forum, competitiveness includes different factors that effect the productivity of the country, political environment and institutional arrangements. Increase in productivity, basic requirements and innovation are important factors which effect countries’ growth figures. The aim of this study is to find out the exact impact of individual Global Competitiveness Index variables on growth. We use data from countries which have GDP per capita within the interval 5.500-10.000 USD as of 2005: Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Romania, Russia, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela. The growth numbers of these countries between 2006 and 2011 are taken as dependent variable while the factors those constitute the Global Competitiveness Index (basic requirements, efficiency enchancers and innovation) are included as independent variables into the model. Using static panel analysis the explanatory power of those three variables on growth is analyzed and significant results are obtained. TEMEL (basic requirements) and ETKİNLİK (efficiency) variables have positive impact on growth (the coefficients are 6.75 and 6.72 respectively), while the impact of YENİLİK (innovation) on growth is negative (the coefficient is -13.16). According to the Real Business Cycles theory the technological innovations sometimes create cycles by making the current capital unusable. The empirical results of this study support this notion.
