A Research and Development Module Supplementing the National Accounts

This paper presents a modified national accounting system tailored to a description of the role of Research and Development (R&D) in the national economy. The main differences with the standard national accounts are some changes in the basic concepts (e.g. own account production of R&D is considered as capital formation) and the introduction of additional classifications. Statistics on R&D, based on the guidelines in the Frascati manual, have to serve as a major data source. However, the Frascati statistics has some clear limitations, e.g. they ignore the income from and expenditure on patents and licenses and do not make a distinction between subsidies for R&D and the purchase of R&D