Does Europe perform too little corporate R&D? A comparison of EU and non-EU corporate R&D performance

Pietro Moncada-Paternò-Castello, Constantin Ciupagea (), Keith Smith (), Alexander Tübke and Mike Tubbs
Additional contact information
Constantin Ciupagea: Institute of World Economy and Romanian Centre for Economic Modelling
Keith Smith: Australian Innovation Research Centre, University of Tasmania
Mike Tubbs: Innovomantex Ltd and Ashcroft International Business School

No 2009-11, JRC Working Papers on Corporate R&D and Innovation from Joint Research Centre

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Research and Development intensity; EU-US R&D gap; size of firms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2009-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-sbm and nep-tid
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Journal Article: Does Europe perform too little corporate R&D? A comparison of EU and non-EU corporate R&D performance (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ipt:wpaper:200911

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