An empirical investigation of Triple Helix and national innovation system dynamics in ASEAN-5 economies

This paper exhibits the concept of Triple Helix model to explain and link university-industry-government (Triple Helix) connections to national innovation systems theory. The driver of this paper is to test the dynamics of Triple Helix concept under national innovation system in the Association of South East Asian Countries (ASEAN)-5 economies. Panel econometric analysis with cross-sectional dependence (CD) test is applied to investigate the relationship amongst Triple Helix variables. The empirical analysis employs innovation indicators of five founding ASEAN countries namely Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand for the period of 2000-2015 from an existing WDI and WCY database. Econometric results support the two research questions of this study; firstly, there is a significant relationship between innovation outcome and its key drivers under Triple Helix context of National Innovation System in ASEAN-5 economies; secondly, the extent of the relationship among government R&D expenditure with high-tech productions are positive and significant while new ideas coming from universities as scientific publications and high-tech production have positive relationship but not significant yet in ASEAN-5 countries. Overall labor productivity is positive and significant with innovation outcomes in ASEAN-5