Assessing the Impact of the UK’s Research Excellence Framework on the Relationship between University Scholarly Output and Education and Regional Economic Growth

This paper assesses the relationship between stakeholder influence, university scholarly and educational output, and regional economic growth. Specifically, we theorize that stakeholder intervention with respect to university teaching and learning, scholarly research, and entrepreneurship enhances the contribution of universities to regional economic growth. We test this theory using data from the United Kingdom’s Research Excellence Framework (REF), an evaluation of the research impact of British higher education institutions. We find that business school graduates, as well as graduates in STEM and health fields, have a positive impact on regional human capital development. On the other hand, stakeholder influence, through the REF, appears to have a negative effect on the retention of human capital but a positive effect on commercialization in the region. Our findings provide new evidence of positive economic spillovers arising from university research and education and the role of fields, such as business administration, in enhancing human capital development and economic growth. They also lend credence to the notion that graduates are an important channel of knowledge and technology transfer.