This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the production of scientific knowledge and level of income for a panel of 56 countries during the period 1996–2015. We argue that the accumulation of scientific knowledge is a key factor for the enhancement of educational and technological capabilities within an economy, and hence may have a positive impact on GDP per capita levels. We use academic publications in refereed journals (in all areas and specifically in engineering) as a proxy of scientific performance. As regards the impacts of scientific performance, we distinguish between high- and middle-income countries and, among the latter, between Asian and Latin America. The results show that academic publications are consistently and positively correlated with income per capita, for both middle and high-income countries. We also find non-linear effects in both groups. Those effects are lower for middle-income countries suggesting the presence of decreasing returns on academic performance. Finally, while Asian countries benefited from specialization in engineering research, no such effects were found for their Latin American peers.

本文旨在调查1996-2015年期间由56个国家组成的小组的科学知识生产与收入水平之间的关系。我们认为，科学知识的积累是增强经济体内教育和技术能力的关键因素，因此可能对人均GDP产生积极影响。我们使用学术期刊（在各个领域，尤其是在工程领域）中的学术出版物作为科学绩效的代理。关于科学绩效的影响，我们区分了高收入和中等收入国家，在后者与亚洲和拉丁美洲之间。结果表明，在中等收入和高收入国家，学术出版物与人均收入一直保持正相关。我们还在两组中都发现了非线性效应。对于中等收入国家而言，这些影响较低，表明存在学习成绩回报下降的情况。最后，虽然亚洲国家受益于工程研究的专业化，但对拉丁美洲的同行却没有发现这样的影响。