Knowledge Economy Factors and the Development of Knowledge-based Economy

The aim of this paper is to identify the various knowledge economy factors that have an impact on the achieved economic growth of national economies. This paper argues that there is no single scenario for building a knowledge-based economy. It utilizes variables of the knowledge economy, collected according to the Knowledge Assessment Methodology (KAM - benchmarking tool of the World Bank), on a sample of 118 countries. The countries are divided in three income groups according to GDP per capita PPP in 2006. Multivariate analysis is used. The analysis was conducted twice on data from KAM 2007 and KAM 2008 to avoid drawing wrong conclusions through using data limited to a single year. The results suggest that there are many significant factors and variables of knowledge economy that have an impact on the achieved development of the three income groups. Based on these results, proposals and measures for enhancing sustainable development and building knowledge-based economies for the three income groups of countries are made.