R&D, Innovation and the Impact on Productivity in Flanders

This paper presents an empirical study on productivity growth using data from the Flemish part of the Community Innovation Survey 2005. In particular, we investigate growth differences between R&D-performing firms and non-R&D performers. As internal R&D is only one source of innovativeness, we also consider growth contributions of product and process innovations. Using a sample of more than 1,200 firms in Flemish manufacturing and selected services, we find that R&D-performers show an almost 6%-points higher growth rate between 2002 and 2004 than non-R&D performers, on average. However, once product and process innovation are introduced in the model, the contribution of R&D drops to about 4%-points. Interestingly, we find that process innovations are an important driver of productivity growth while product innovations have no significant impact once it is controlled for R&D activity