Financing of R&D by the manufacturing industry and patent production in three MENA countries

Abstract

Patents represent one of the most important indicators of the innovation process. The challenge of this study is to identify the factors favoring the
filing of patents by the industry during the analysis of the cases of three countries in the MENA region, namely Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, during
the period 2012-2021. This would involve analyzing the effects of R&D funding by industry through indicators such as the number of publications, R&D funding by industry and university-business collaboration, before being able to deduce by a multiple regression on panel data the results of the nature of the relationship between these determinants and patent filings by residents of these three countries. The results obtained made it possible to conclude that collaboration at the level of indexed publications, carried out jointly by universities and companies, has a major impact on the production of patents for the cases of Morocco and Tunisia. As for the Egyptian case, the results showed that the financing of research activities by industry has a positive and strong effect on the number of patents filed.