National Competitiveness and Expenditure on Education, Research and Development

National (macroeconomic) competitiveness is one of words in vogue that is mostly used by politicians, economists among others in today's globalized world. However, the concept of competitiveness is also a very controversial issue. There are lots of concepts and approaches to a country's overall competitiveness. In this paper, the author applies a comprehensive and established indicator used by The United Nations - The Human development index, to measure competitiveness at the national level. The main goal of this paper is to find whether higher expenditure on education, research and development leads to higher competitiveness. In evaluating the relationship, countries such as the United States, Japan and European Union countries (27) - the Triad countries were used. The panel data analysis was used to investigate the relationship and it was found that, expenditure on education and R & D positively leads to national competitiveness.