A Note on The Drivers of R&D Intensity

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the extent to which technological specialization influences the observed R&D intensity of countries. The econometric analysis performed on a cross-country cross-industry panel dataset (21 industrial sectors, 18 countries, from 2001 to 2004) suggests that accounting for the technological specialisation of countries substantially affect the traditional country ranking. The exceptions are Sweden, The United States, France and Japan, which have an ‘above-than-average’ R&D intensity in most industries, as compared to the 14 other countries. The high level of R&D intensity of South Korea and Finland, for instance, is essentially due to their specialisation in R&D-intensive industries, and not to a macroeconomic environment particularly favourable to R&D.