The Impact of Government Expenditure and Tertiary Education on High-Technology Exports: Evidence from Asia-Pacific and European Nations

This study extends the growing literature on the 4th and 9th Sustainable Development Goals by examining whether tertiary education moderates the relationship between government spending on education and high-technology exports. We employ Robust Least Squares Estimation to analyze an unbalanced panel of 24 Asia-Pacific countries and 37 European nations from 2007 to 2022. This method effectively handles outliers and heteroskedasticity in panel estimations. The empirical results indicate that both a higher ratio of tertiary education enrollment and government expenditure empower high-technology exports. Our findings support human capital, innovation, and endogenous growth theories, as well as prior literature. However, the study reveals significant regional disparities in the impact of education on high-technology exports. While higher tertiary enrollment boosts high-tech exports in Asia-Pacific countries, government spending has little impact. Conversely, in European countries, government spending positively influences high-tech exports, while tertiary enrollment shows no significant effect. This study contributes practical policy implications for sustainably improving high-technology exports in Asia-Pacific and European nations by fostering human capital development and efficient government spending on education.