Measuring the internationalisation of EU corporate R&D: a novel complementary use of statistical sources

The report summarises the main results of a research activity aimed at testing a novel approach for the measurement of EU business R&D internationalisation. Such approach is based on the complementary use of two different sources of data: on the one hand, statistical data from private R&D expenditure taken from national surveys (BERD); on the other hand, data collected from companies' annual reports and accounts (as in the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard). The main objectives of the study were: i) to explore the methodological rationale for comparing the two sets of data; ii) to test the robustness of the novel methodology through an analysis applied to four EU countries (Belgium, Finland, Germany and Italy); iii) to provide indications of possible further research and follow up activities. The main results from the project are as follows: - BERD and Scoreboard values, though addressing slightly different concepts, are comparable and can be used in a complementary way. - Data regarding top EU R&D performers (that is, companies included in Scoreboard rankings who are the active part of the R&D internationalisation process) have to be considered from the starting point of such complementary use, instead of as final data at the country level resulting from official statistics. - Using top R&D performers’ global values and adding aggregate values from national R&D statistics allows novel insights on the R&D internationalisation process to be given, at least for the four EU countries involved. - Further research could rely on the forthcoming Euro-Group Register under development at EUROSTAT, to obtain a clear view of intra-EU cross-country R&D flows.