The influence of financial investments on regional knowledge competitiveness

With the globalization and ICT development, the competition of regions and nations are gradually moving towards knowledge competition, therefore, researches on knowledge economy have been increasingly popular in economic studies. Within the knowledge economy domain, one particular research challenge is how financial investments influence regional knowledge competitiveness. In our thesis, we will design a "regional knowledge economy competitiveness cyclical scheme" and further test which financila investments significantly affect regional competitiveness in the knowledge economy. We use data from 145 global regions, including North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific for our analysis. From that we find business firms' investments in R&D and innovation, government investment in higher education and private equity investment in knowledge-based industries are significant indicators that can promote regional knowledge competitiveness. North American regions are more competitive in the knowledge economy than European and Asian-Pacific regions. In order to increase European knowledge competitiveness, policy suggestions are provided for European policy makers at the end of this paper.