Does Europe Perform Too Little Corporate R&D? A Comparison of EU and non-EU Corporate R&D Performance

This paper examines whether there are differences in private R&D investment performance between the EU and the US and, if so, why. The study is based on data from the 2008 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard. The investigation assesses the effects of several very distinct factors that can determine the relative size of the overall R&D intensities of the two economies: these are the influence of sector composition (structural effect) vis-à-vis the intensity of R&D in each sector (intrinsic effect) and the company demographics. The paper finds that the lower overall corporate R&D intensity for the EU is the result of sector specialisation (structural effect) - the US has a stronger sectoral specialisation in the high R&D intensity (especially ICT-related) sectors than does the EU, and also has a much larger population of R&D investing firms within these sectors. Since aggregate R&D indicators are so closely dependent on industrial structures, many of the debates and claims about differences in comparative R&D performance are in effect about industrial structure rather than sector R&D performance. These have complex policy implications that are discussed in the closing section.

MONCADA PATERNO' CASTELLO Pietro;  CIUPAGEA Constantin;  SMITH Keith;  TUBBS Mike;  TUEBKE Alexander; 

2010-12-09

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

JRC35860

0048-7333,   

www.elsevier.com/locate/respol,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC35860,   

10.1016/j.respol.2010.02.012,