Measuring the innovative activity of New Zealand firms

Simon Wakeman () and Trinh Le
Additional contact information
Trinh Le: Motu Research

No 2015/02, Working Papers from New Zealand Productivity Commission

Abstract: International comparisons suggest that, although the New Zealand public sector invests considerable resources into scientific research, New Zealand firms are not particularly effective at generating applied knowledge and even less so at turning it into commercial products. However, these findings are based on aggregate data and there is limited evidence on innovative activity at the firm level. This paper provides an overview of measures that capture both the inputs into and outputs from the innovative activities of New Zealand firms, using data on firm-level innovation from 2005 to 2013 available from Statistics New Zealand's Longitudinal Business Database. The paper finds that the various measures tell different stories about the pattern of innovative activity across New Zealand firms. Notably, R&D expenditure and intensity are only weakly correlated with, and display different patterns to, measures of innovative output. For example, different types of innovation output occur in firms that do not report any investment in R&D. Accordingly, to get a full picture of the innovative activity of New Zealand firms, it is necessary to use multiple measures to get a broader picture.

JEL-codes: O32 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-06
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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