Market Capital, Intellectual Property Rights and Economic Growth of OPEC Member Countries: A Panel Data Approach

This paper examines the role of market capital and intellectual property rights in determining a country's rate of economic growth. The empirical analysis is conducted using a unique panel data set of OPEC member countries from 1995 to 2009. In this study, initially using Conceptual framework that is a modified version of the intellectual capital tree described by Edvinsson and Malone (1997) and introduced by Bontis(2004), market capital variables of nations define. Then, using a model of endogenous growth, main model is stipulated and run with market capital variables and IPRs as independent variables into the model and parameters are estimated. The results suggest that: (1) international trade and international tourism as important proxy of market capital are relevant in explaining per capita GDP growth but their coefficient are low; (2) international trade has a stronger impact on per capita GDP growth than international tourism; (3) high-technology export as another proxy of market capital is not significant in explaining per capita GDP growth; (4) IPRs as important factor doesn't affect the per capita GDP growth.