Impact of the economic, political and social environment on per capita scientific production: a comparison of Asia-Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract

This article aims to establish what are the variables that affect the per capita production of papers indexed in Scopus between 2009 and 2019, for the countries of Asia-Pacific (Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam) and Latin America and the Caribbean (Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, Venezuela). For this purpose, dynamic and static panels were estimated, whose explanatory variables were the following Legatum pillars: health, education, access to markets, business conditions, investment environment, personal freedom, security, governance, social capital, economic quality, natural environment, access to markets and infrastructure and living conditions. The findings allowed us to establish that: education, health and access to markets are significant variables for the group of Asia-Pacific countries. In the case of Latin America and the Caribbean, the variables that explain per capita scientific production are: personal freedom, lagged per capita scientific production, health, education, and security.