How (when) does technological innovation improve government effectiveness? An empirical investigation with cross-national evidence

Abstract

Abstract How to understand the impacts of government effectiveness (GE) on technological innovation has received full attention. But in turn, it is still a puzzle how technological innovation promotes GE. With the intention of providing rigorous empirical evidence to fill the gap, authors efficiently selected variables based on novel machine learning and analyzed the influence mechanism of technological innovation on GE through different models, using panel data from global countries over 20 years. The investigation has revealed that the relationship between technological innovation and GE is not a simple linear relation but a more complicated inverted U-shaped relation. We also distinguished the impacts of technological innovation on GE in countries with diverse democratic and developing levels. This pioneering work has provided new insights to our understanding of innovation diffusion and determinants of GE.