The Impacts of Investments in Capital, Education and Technology on Productivity in Europe

In this paper there are analysed the impacts of capital investments, education and technology on the European countries' productivity, seen as a key dimension of economic growth and competitiveness. Using econometric instruments, such as Pearson correlations, Granger causality and Panel Least Squares method, there are processed data for 20 European countries, OECD members, for the period 2000-2013. The results reveal that gross capital formation education and technology were the most significant positive determinants of productivity, but the manifestation of the financial crisis had the most significant negative effects on productivity, while foreign direct investments inflows had insignificant impact. Moreover, foreign direct investments inflows appears to be the only variable that does not appear to have a causal relationship with productivity.