Determinants of national innovation capacity in developing countries: An empirical survey

National innovation capacity is seen as the main source of sustainable growth and prosperity of countries. National innovation capacity, being both an economic and political asset, is defined as the potential of a country to produce innovation. At the same time, measuring the capacity of national innovation provides important information about the dynamics of innovation in the field of economics. Also, it is seen that most of the studies on national innovation capacity have focused on developed countries. In this study, it is aimed to make an empirical analysis of the determinants of national innovation capacity in developing countries in comparison with developed countries. For this purpose, variables considered to be determinants of national innovation capacity are classified under three headings as national technological capability and infrastructure factors, external factors, and institutional factors. In most studies in the literature, national innovation capacity is represented only by the number of patents in the empirical analysis. However, in most of these studies, the disadvantages and deficient aspects of representing national innovation capacity only with the number of patents are mentioned and almost no alternative methods have been suggested. Based on the suggestions and methods in empirical studies, the national innovation capacity index is calculated and represented as a new output variable representing the national innovation capacity in the effort to fill the relevant gap in the literature. In the study, data in the period of 1996-2016 are analyzed by the panel data analysis method for 18 developing countries and 31 developed countries. The effects of national technological capabilities and infrastructure factors of national innovation capacity in developing countries are seen to be weak. At the same time, it is seen that external factors have a positive effect on national innovation capacity in these countries and this indicates the dependence on foreign technologies in the development of technological capabilities.