Innovation Determinants and Innovation as a Determinant: Evidence from Developing Countries

v To my family vi Acknowledgements The work on this dissertation was not possible without the help and support of many people, and I want to acknowledge and express thanks to all of them. First of all, I am highly grateful to my supervisor Prof. Bart Vers-pagen for his guidance and valuable suggestions while I was working on this book. I am thankful to him for giving me the opportunity and guiding me to explore my area of interest with clarity and working on it with full flexibility. His comments and suggestions were always beneficial to shape my rudimentary ideas into a scientifically written manuscript. He guided me at each stage of my research, and I always found him ready while I need his help. I am also very thankful to Prof. Pierre Mohnen, Prof. Martin Car-ree, and Dr. Gustavo Crespi for accepting my dissertation as the members of the dissertation committee and giving me suggestions. I benefitted a lot from these suggestions in order to improve my work. I am deeply indebted to the Higher Education Commission of Pa-kistan for financial support and to the UNU-MERIT, the Netherlands, for providing me the work space and all other facilities needed for my research. I felt very convenient and comfortable working in the research friendly environment of the UNU-MERIT. I am pleased to express my thanks to the colleagues and friends in the UNU-MERIT. I learned a lot from the discussion with them on various topics related to my research. The sweet memories of staying in the UNU-MERIT in particular and in Maastricht in general will always be with me throughout my life. I am very thankful to my parents for their endless support at every moment of my life. This thesis so far is the final outcome of my academic career which was possible because of aspirations and then struggle of my parents. I still remember the days when I was in Til-burg University, the Netherlands for my MSc study, and how they took care of my wife and son in Pakistan, and provided me a relaxed mind to concentrate on my study. vii Last but not least, I want to say thanks to my wife, Saghira, who was always with me during the long journey of writing this disserta-tion. Her emotional support was always a source of satisfaction and encouragement, with which I was always ready to work hard, …