Economic Convergence in Context of Knowledge Economies in Asia: Instrumental Variable Estimation

Traditional convergence empirics overlook the role of knowledge as a contributor to economic convergence. This paper incorporates knowledge as a factor contributing towards economic convergence in Asian countries. In addition to knowledge, capital formation, interaction effects of tertiary education with ICT and knowledge and finally electricity consumption are also used in the said regression. Instrumental Variables estimation is used to test convergence hypothesis for sample Asian countries for data of time period 2001-2010. Empirical results are in favor of knowledge-augmented convergence, inferring that knowledge participates in convergence process across sample Asian countries. Factors like capital accumulation and interaction effects of ICT and knowledge with human capital and electricity consumption show their positive role in contributing to income per capita. Recommendations are made to improve the tertiary education sector and to promote economically productive research for advancing towards economic convergence in Asian region in particular and for UDCs in general.