RESEARCH AND INNOVATION - European Commission · bibliometric indicator of scientific excellence...
Transcript of RESEARCH AND INNOVATION - European Commission · bibliometric indicator of scientific excellence...
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1. INTRODUCTION
Research and innovation (R&I) plays an
essential role in triggering smart and sustainable growth and job creation. By
producing new knowledge, research is central to developing new and innovative
products, processes and services, which enable higher productivity, industrial
competitiveness, and ultimately prosperity.
The importance of productivity in driving
sustainable economic growth and consolidating Europe's recovery has been
broadly recognised1. However, EU labour productivity is around 12% lower than
that of the United States and the gap
has widened in the last 10 years. Increasing labour productivity depends
on the ability of economies to invest more in the capital available per worker,
i.e. capital deepening, and to raise efficiency in combining production
factors, i.e. multifactor productivity. Since the crisis, investment in capital has
been low and multifactor productivity
growth flat or negative in most EU countries.
For countries that show high levels of
output per capita, R&I, skills and technological development are of
paramount importance to multifactor
productivity2. For those that are catching up, it is also crucial to starting to narrow
the productivity gap. Coupled with better regulatory and institutional frameworks
1 The future of productivity, OECD, Paris, 2015. 2 Global Competitiveness Report 2016-2017, WEF series, Geneva, 2017.
and efficient market functioning, R&I systems are essential to raising
efficiency in combined use of a country's
labour and capital.
R&I systems are complex ecosystems which need various elements to perform
optimally. These include a solid public science base producing high quality
outputs; strong business participation in
innovation activities; fluid and abundant knowledge flows across R&I actors; and
good framework conditions that allow business innovation to flourish.
Given the diversity of national R&I
systems across the EU, it is important to
identify the main bottlenecks in each one. The R&I policy analyses in the
Commission's Country Reports3 are therefore based on a two-step approach:
identifying for each Member State,
based on a set of R&I performance
indicators, what its main R&I challenges are: that is, finding the
main bottlenecks impeding the full contribution of R&I to economic and
productivity growth; assessing whether the policy
response is adequate to address the challenges identified.
3 https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/european-
semester. See also the Research and Innovation Observatory — Horizon 2020 Policy Support Facility for analysis, insights, statistical data and best practice in designing, implementing and
evaluating research and innovation policy at EU and national levels.
EUROPEAN SEMESTER THEMATIC FACTSHEET
RESEARCH AND INNOVATION
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This factsheet builds on this two-step approach as follows. Section 2 reviews
the performance of European R&I
systems and identifies persistent challenges in terms of investment,
knowledge flows and framework conditions. Section 3 discusses the
available evidence on potential policies to address these challenges and the
policies' effectiveness depending on the specific conditions in which they are
applied. The policy levers presented in section 3 are only an illustration: they do
not reflect the whole spectrum of policy
responses that can boost R&I systems. Finally, section 4 sketches good policy
practices in Member States to address their challenges.
2. POLICY CHALLENGES
The main R&I policy challenges identified in the European Semester Country
Reports fall into three broad categories: the low quality of the public R&I system
(2.1), weak knowledge flows and science-business linkages (2.2) and
bottlenecks affecting investment in
innovation (2.3).
2.1. Low quality of the public R&I system
The public R&I system (composed of higher education institutions and other
public organisations performing research and innovation) plays a key role in
generating and boosting the knowledge and talent needed by innovative firms,
enabling them to build on their R&I efforts. Analysing its quality across
Member States helps to identify those
countries where there are bottlenecks.
There are a number of relevant performance indicators to assess the
quality of a public R&I system. Some of the most widely used are: 'bibliometrics',
to measure the impact of scientific
publications on the generation of new knowledge; the number of prestigious
'European Research Council' grants awarded to researchers in a country (as
these are considered to reward scientific excellence); and the number of top-
performing universities in a country according to international rankings.
An analysis of these indicators highlights a clear and persistent science divide in
the EU. First of all, there is an east-west
divide, with lower overall quality of public R&I systems in eastern European
countries compared to other Member States. Secondly, there is also a north-
south divide, albeit less pronounced, as Greece, Portugal, Spain, Cyprus, Malta
and Italy are performing just below the EU average, and hold an intermediate
position between eastern European and northern European countries.
To a large extent, these divides are the result of lower public R&D investment in
the countries that lag behind. However, when we account for different levels of
public R&D investment, we still see that several countries that lag behind perform
worse than their public R&D investment
level would predict, which hints at potential problems with the way public
R&D investment is allocated.
To illustrate these divides, figure 1 shows: (i) on the vertical axis, a
bibliometric indicator of scientific
excellence (the percentage of highly-cited scientific publications among all
national scientific publications)4; and (ii) on the horizontal axis, public R&D
intensity (expenditure on R&D performed in the public research system as a % of
GDP).
This reveals three main types of
situation:
Member States where the very low quality of the public R&I system is a
key issue to be addressed, in
particular through capacity building. For these countries (e.g. Bulgaria,
Latvia, Croatia and Romania), increasing investment needs to go
hand in hand with far-reaching reforms to increase efficiency and
quality. Member States with a very strong
science base, such as the United
4 'Highly-cited' publications are the 10 %
most cited. As citations need to be assessed over a period of several years after publication, the most recent data are for research published in 2014.
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Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium. For these Member
States, the key challenge might be to
translate their world-class science base into an increased level of
innovation in the economy. Member States like Finland, the
Czech Republic, Estonia and Lithuania, which do not show a level
of scientific performance in line with
their public R&D expenditure. In the cases of the Czech Republic, Estonia
and Lithuania, this situation may be
linked to significant increases in public R&D expenditure in the last 10
years which have not yet had their full impact. This highlights the need
for these countries to focus now on increasing the efficiency of this
investment.
Figure 1 — Quality of scientific output and public R&D investment
Source: DG Research and Innovation — Unit for the Analysis and Monitoring of National Research and
Innovation Policies
Data: Eurostat, EIS 2016
Notes: (1) Scientific publications within the 10% most cited scientific publications
worldwide as % of total scientific publications of the country, fractional counting method.
(2) Government expenditure on R&D plus higher education expenditure on R&D as % of GDP. Linear regression: y = 7.3693 + 4.3233
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2.2. Weak knowledge flows and science-business linkages
While some Member States urgently need to increase the overall quality of
their public science base, others should focus their efforts on better harnessing
the strengths of their science base to increase productivity and to boost
economic wealth and job creation. This mainly means fostering science-business
links to allow knowledge to spread more
widely and be used in the business sector.
This knowledge diffusion can occur through many channels and the relative
importance of these channels will depend on the structure of each national R&I
system. Given that some knowledge flows are difficult to measure, assessing
countries' overall performance on this
score means combining a range of quantitative and qualitative information.
One of the key elements to be assessed is the level of public-private collaboration
through 'contract research', i.e. direct
investment by firms in concrete projects carried out by public research
organisations. Figure 2 shows:
- on the vertical axis, the volume of research performed in the public R&I
system and funded by business (in % of GDP).
- on the horizontal axis, business R&D intensity (which needs to be reflected as
the scope for public-private cooperation
depends on the volume of business R&D activities in the country).
In combination with other quantitative and qualitative information, this allows
us to spot countries such as Ireland, Italy and Portugal in which the low level
of collaboration between the public science base and the business sector is a
major bottleneck in the R&I system.
Figure 2 — Public expenditure on R&D financed by businesses in % of GDP versus business expenditure on R&D
Source: DG Research and Innovation — Unit for the Analysis and Monitoring of National Research and Innovation Policies
Data: Eurostat
Notes: (1) Government expenditure on R&D plus higher education expenditure on R&D. (2) Financing from abroad is not included.(3) BE, LU, AT, SE: 2013; BG, DE, IE, ES, FR,
IT, CY, PT, EU: 2014. Linear regression: y = 0.0145x + 0.0234
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2.3. Bottlenecks in investment in innovation
To maximise the potential economic
returns of the R&I ecosystem, companies need to operate in an environment that
allows them to transform knowledge effectively into economic returns. This
not only depends on the quality and quantity of scientific and technological
outputs, but also on the framework conditions in which they operate. It is
therefore crucial to build an environment conducive to R&D investment and
entrepreneurial activity through structural
reforms and effective policy instruments.
The gap in business R&D intensity between the EU and the US5 is the result
of the EU's lower ability to develop major
R&D-intensive businesses based on advances in science and technology,
notably in ICT. It is a stylised fact that, when new firms are founded in the EU,
they grow more slowly than in the United States and fewer of them join the ranks
of the world's largest6.
Figure 3 below shows the number of
employees in fast-growing firms in the most innovative7 sectors compared with
the total number of employees (horizontal
axis).
Figure 3 –Employment in fast growing firms in innovative sectors as % of total employment, 2012 and 2014
Source: DG Research and Innovation — Unit for the Analysis and Monitoring of National Research and Innovation Policies
Data: EIS 2017
Note: (1) EL: data are not available for Greece.
5 In 2015, the business R&D intensity was 1.25% in the EU while it was 1.99% in the US.
Business R&D is also significantly higher in other major economies: Korea (3.28%), Japan (2.58%) and China (1.59%). 6 Veugelers and Cincera, 'Europe missing yollies', Bruegel policy brief, Brussels, 2010. 7 The top 50% 'most innovative' sectors are selected based on the innovation coefficients of each sector at EU level as shown by Community Innovation Survey scores weighted by employment in knowledge-intensive sectors. Firms with fewer than 10 employees are not taken into account.
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The figure shows that several countries such as Ireland have managed to create
dynamic environments to foster
entrepreneurship and conditions for innovative businesses to be able to grow.
It also reveals the interesting situation of countries like Belgium, which ranks at the
bottom while still performing well in the other R&I indicators presented above.
Belgium boasts a good science base and strong academia-business cooperation but
fast-growing firms in the most innovative sectors account for rather a low share of
employment in Belgium. Although Belgian
R&I policies have enabled business R&D intensity to increase in the last decade,
R&D seems to remain too concentrated in a limited set of large multinationals. This
weakness prevents the strengths of its R&I system from translating fully into
economic performance. Enterprise growth is complex and largely
context-dependent. Businesses in
different markets are confronted with different framework conditions and
competitive market environments, have different capabilities and make use of
different business models and innovation strategies.
Nevertheless, evidence suggests that framework conditions that support the
reallocation of market shares to more
productive companies are important for the emergence and number of high-
growth innovative enterprises in a country. Friction related to regulations
and policies that hamper the processes of reallocation of resources to more
efficient uses hold these enterprises back8.
Moreover, other factors may be behind this lower performance regarding high-
growth enterprises in innovative sectors.
For instance, the availability of suitable financing is crucial. In this regard, the
EU as a whole and all individual Member States continue to lag behind the US in
the amount of available venture capital invested as a percentage of GDP: the
ratio of the gap between the US and the EU is 6:1. In addition, other framework
conditions, such as the tax system,
financial development, the availability of skilled labour, the efficiency of the public
administration and the rule of law can have an impact.
Figure 4 — Ease of doing business (highest scores represent the easiest environments for doing business), 2010 and 2017
Source: DG Research and Innovation — Unit for the Analysis and Monitoring of National Research and Innovation Policies
Data: Ease of Doing Business Indicator (World Bank)
Note: (1) EU: unweighted average of the values for the Member States (the average for 2010 does not include
MT).
8 Hölzl, 'High growth firms in Europe', 'Science, Research and Innovation performance of the EU', Commission, Brussels, 2016.
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Figure 4 shows the results of the World Bank's annual Doing Business report,
which ranks countries on the quality of
regulation for businesses, including protection of intellectual property rights,
thereby capturing another set of relevant framework conditions for innovation.
The World Bank composite indicator
shows that:
Denmark, the UK and Sweden have
very good framework conditions in place for doing business.
Some eastern European economies
(such as Poland, the Czech Republic,
Slovenia, Romania and Croatia) have been narrowing the gap with the best
EU performers since 2010, mainly by reducing the complexity and cost of
regulatory processes and strengthening legal institutions.
Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, all among the economies most adversely
affected by the economic crisis, have maintained a steady pace of
regulatory reforms.
Although most Member States have
improved their framework conditions for doing business overall, one specific policy
challenge is still properly supporting fast-growing SMEs in innovative sectors, which,
by boosting competition and making resource allocation more efficient, are
better able to speed up structural change at the aggregate level and transform the EU
into a more knowledge-oriented and
innovation-driven economy.
3. POLICY LEVERS
3.1. Increasing the quality of the
public R&I system
The level of financial resources made available to the public R&D sector is a
key determinant of the quality of its output as measured for example by
highly-cited scientific publications: if
Member States have invested more than the average in their public research base
the system tends to perform well in terms of scientific excellence.
At the same time, while a high quality
science base depends on adequate public funding, merely increasing investment
will not get the job done. Ensuring the
effectiveness and efficiency of these investments sometimes requires ambitious
reform of national R&I systems focusing on how public resources for R&D are allocated.
Such reform may feature the use of international panels to allocate project-
based funding or the use of performance criteria in distributing institutional funding.
In some Member States, excessive fragmentation among research-performing
institutions is a brake on the efficiency of their public research systems: wide-
ranging institutional reforms are required to reach critical mass, especially in fields
identified as relevant to implementing a 'smart specialisation' strategy.
Finally, international mobility among researchers benefits scientific quality,
innovation and growth. The scientific impact of authors who have never
moved has been shown to be lower than that of authors who have spent time
abroad. Both returnees and incoming
researchers usually help to increase the quality of scientific output because of
their exposure to other ways of conducting research and their
contribution to an international research network. For the countries most affected
by outflows, it is therefore vital to put in place policies to reintegrate researchers
into their system of origin or attract
international researchers. This may also stimulate those who remain to increase
their productivity.
3.2. Building stronger knowledge flows. Strengthening science-business
linkages
In some Member States benefiting from
a good quality public R&I system, science-business cooperation may
remain limited due to a mismatch between public research capacity and the
needs of the economy. A key lever of
science-business cooperation is thus the design and implementation of 'smart
specialisation strategies' which focus resources on areas where there is
potential for business absorption. In many Member States, though there is
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such a strategy, it is not being implemented effectively.
Moreover, governments can also use a set of policy instruments that help to
better channel public research capacity towards the needs of industry and the
economy. Some of these are:
incentives for public research, aimed
particularly at institutions (e.g. through funding criteria that favour
engagement with businesses) and at researchers (e.g. through recognising
experience working with the business sector in public-sector career
development);
targeted funding schemes for public-
private projects, proofs-of-concept, research agendas defined with
industry and PhD studentships in industry.
3.3. Putting in place an investment-friendly environment for innovation
In addition to factors related to the
quality and relevance of the science base, a broad range of policy levers can
be used to boost business R&D
investment and help transform new scientific and technological outputs into
innovation and economic activity. Member States use both direct and
indirect support instruments to promote business R&D investment and activities.
They provide grants and buy R&D services (direct support), and they
provide fiscal incentives, such as advantageous tax treatment of R&D
expenditure and preferential treatment for income from licensing and for sales of
assets attributable to R&D or patents (indirect support).
However, the availability, accessibility and efficiency of direct public support for
R&I and other incentives aimed at stimulating business R&D often needs to
be improved to ensure public support creates additional private investment.
Administrative burdens linked to public
support can be a serious obstacle to investment, especially for SMEs. In some
Member States, R&D tax credits schemes need to be improved, as some may be
skewed towards big companies and need to be fine-tuned to better take into
account the needs of SMEs and of young,
high-growth innovative companies.
Access to finance for innovation is crucial to translate new ideas into innovation.
Although bank loans and equity finance, notably through venture capital, are still
the most widely used means of financing innovation, there are other channels that
can be used, and some novel methods
such as crowd-funding, which have gained traction in the last few years,
may provide a useful alternative for SMEs trying to transform new ideas into
innovation.
Another issue to be addressed is the
availability of a workforce with adequate skills: in particular, skills shortages can
arise from mismatches between academic curricula and labour market
needs.
In general, fostering an environment
favourable to business R&D investment and innovation requires coordinated use
of a range of policies: moving from a 'silo' approach and developing a 'whole
government' approach to the policy mix.
This should encompass the adoption of
smart regulation, public demand for innovative products, and the development
of efficient product markets through structural reform that supports effective
(re)allocation of production resources towards innovative, high-productivity
activities. In many Member States, this will require strengthened institutions and
governance.
4. POLICY STATE OF PLAY
Effective and efficient research and
innovation systems are those that
succeed in producing strong scientific, technological and innovation outputs,
both in terms of quality and relevance, to address societies' economic and social
challenges. Although there are still major differences between Member States in
terms of their R&I systems' performance, most of them have actively worked to
improve the quality of their public
research systems and/or to put in place the right framework conditions to
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facilitate investment and innovation, and some have obtained excellent results.
4.1. Increasing the quality of the public research system
In the EU, scientific excellence is still to
some extent concentrated in a group of
leading countries, such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Denmark.
Nevertheless, progress has been made in
recent years by most of the other Member States, as shown in figure 5 below, which
shows highly-cited publications as a
percentage of total national scientific publications in 2004 (red dashes) and
2014 (blue bars).
Figure 5 shows that some countries such as Estonia, Luxembourg, Malta and
Slovenia are indeed actively catching up
Figure 5 - Scientific publications within the 10% most cited scientific publications worldwide as % of total scientific publications(1), 2004 and 2014
Source: DG Research and Innovation — Unit for the Analysis and Monitoring of National Research Policies
Data: CWTS based on Web of Science database
Notes: (1) Scientific publication within the 10 % most cited scientific publications worldwide as % of total scientific publications of the country. The citation window for a
publication is the publication year plus two years.
These improvements in scientific quality have been made possible mainly by
major investment in R&D, either from national resources (Luxembourg) or
from EU structural funds (in eastern
European countries). The causal link with investment can be seen in figure 6,
which shows the change between 2004 and 2014 in both the share of highly
cited publications (vertical axis) and public R&D intensity (horizontal axis).
Both the positive impact of increased investment and the negative impact of
reduced public R&D investment
(Hungary, Bulgaria) can be seen in this figure.
Nevertheless, figure 6 also shows that the impact of increased investment on
quality has been smaller in some countries (such as the Czech Republic,
Latvia and Lithuania) than in others.
Scientific quality does not depend only on the level of public R&D investment. It
also depends on the diverse capacity of national research systems to obtain the
most value from that investment: system are essential for the countries
that lag behind. There are some good examples of reform
fostering efficiency of the public research
system. In Denmark, higher education reform has aimed to consolidate
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Figure 6 — Quality of scientific output and public R&D investment levels, 2004 and 2014
● 2004 ● 2014
Source: DG Research and Innovation — Unit for the Analysis and Monitoring of National Research Policies
Data: CWTS based on Web of Science database
Notes: (1) Scientific publication within the 10% most cited scientific publications
worldwide as % of total scientific publications of the country. The citation window for a publication is the publication year plus two years.
higher education programmes in fewer
institutions and so increase the coherence and critical mass of public
research. In the UK, the Research Excellence Framework was introduced to
reinforce the link between research excellence and institutional funding.
4.2. Building stronger knowledge
flows. Strengthening science-business linkages
While many Member States still need to focus their efforts on fostering science-
business links to raise private and public investment in R&D and allow proper
knowledge diffusion (see section 2.2), some countries already show particularly
strong public-private cooperation. Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany
have examples of interesting policies put
in place to this end.
In Belgium, the 'competitiveness
clusters' policy was launched in the Walloon region in 2005 as a forward-
looking industrial policy concentrating significant resources in specific economic
areas to create growth and jobs, and to attract both foreign investors and highly
skilled human resources. The clusters
involve companies, training centres and public or private research units in a
given geographical area (Wallonia) which are committed to a partnership-based
approach intended to generate synergies in relation to common innovative
projects.
The partnerships are formed in five
specific markets (life sciences, agri-food,
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mechanical engineering, transport and logistics, and aerospace) and related
technological and scientific fields. The final
aim is to achieve the critical mass needed for competitiveness and international
visibility. The competitiveness clusters have enabled the companies involved to
reach a higher level of excellence, and have brought together the competencies
required to launch successful and more ambitious projects, to innovate by relying
on the competencies of their partners, and to improve their workers' qualifications.
Public authorities support the
competitiveness clusters in carrying out investment, R&D and training projects in
line with the strategy of competitive positioning they have themselves defined.
In the Netherlands, the so-called 'top sectors' approach, which was launched in
2011, helps to build on the strength of the country's science base in a targeted
manner through partnerships between
businesses, academia and public research centres and aims to increase the scope
and ambition of business innovation. This new form of industrial policy, which
focuses on nine key economic sectors, puts industry representatives at the centre
of the coordination process while the government mostly concentrates on
developing sector-specific policies across
ministerial portfolios, including education, innovation and foreign policy.
Finally, in Germany, the so-called 'Fraunhofer model' is a good example of
public-private cooperation. The Fraunhofer Society is one of the world's major
international research organisations, consisting of 67 institutes spread
throughout Germany, each of them
focusing on different fields of applied science. Although some basic funding for
the Fraunhofer Society is provided by the State, more than 70 % of the funding
comes from contract work, either for government projects or for industry. This
model has allowed a flexible, autonomous and entrepreneurial approach to the
Fraunhofer's research priorities while
boosting cooperation with the business sector by paying attention to its research
needs.
4.3. Putting in place an investment-friendly environment for innovation
With highly efficient and effective public R&D investment, a high and improving
level of science & technology excellence and the development of hot spots in key
technologies, the Dutch R&I system has succeeded in increasing its innovative
capacity. Indeed, its innovation performance improved steadily between
2008 and 2014 and the Netherlands is
now an Innovation Leader according to the European Innovation Scoreboard
(European Commission, 2016)9. The framework conditions for innovation are
soundly in place in the Netherlands and, as a result, the country benefits from a
highly competitive knowledge-intensive economy.
The 'Green Deal' approach is a good
example of a Dutch policy which aims to create an investment-friendly environment
and remove barriers to innovation for sustainable economic growth, in particular
early on when innovative initiatives face the most difficulties. This approach is used
to supplement existing instruments, such as legislation and regulation, market and
financial incentives, and measures to
stimulate innovation, and to bring the government closer to firms, stakeholder
organisations and interest groups.
The Green Deal has inspired 'Innovation
Deals', a new pilot scheme launched by the European Commission in May 2016,
the main aim of which is to help innovators with promising solutions to
navigate regulatory challenges to bringing
their ideas to market10. Innovation Deals represent a new way to address obstacles
to innovation presented by EU legal provisions in a pragmatic, open and
transparent manner. They should take the form of voluntary cooperation between
innovators, national/regional/local authorities and Commission departments.
This cooperation is formalised via a Joint
Declaration of Intent.
9 http://ec.europa.eu/growth/industry/ innovation/facts-figures/scoreboards_en 10 https://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-deals/index.cfm?pg=home
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Innovation Deals build on evidence from Member States suggesting that almost
two-thirds of the perceived regulatory
barriers currently preventing innovators from bringing their ideas to the market
can be overcome through explanation or clearer interpretation of specific
regulations by public authorities. If a rule or regulation is confirmed as being an
obstacle to innovation that could bring wider societal benefits, the Deal will
make it visible and feed into possible further actions.
Date: 16.11.2017
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5. REFERENCES
2016 European Commission, Brussels Science, Research and Innovation Performance
of the EU,
The Future of Productivity, OECD, Paris, 2015
Global Competitiveness Report 2016-2017, World Economic Forum, Geneva, 2016
European Innovation Scoreboard, European Commission, Brussels, 2017
Doing Business, World Bank, Washington, 2017
Veugelers and Cincera, 'Europe missing yollies', Bruegel policy brief, Brussels, 2010
http://bruegel.org/wp-content/uploads/imported/publications/PB-RVMC_Yollies_27082010_01.pdf
H2020 Policy Support Facility website: https://rio.jrc.ec.europa.eu/en/policy-support-
facility
European Semester website: https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/european-semester
Innovation Deals: https://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-deals/index.cfm?pg=home
6. USEFUL RESOURCES
Highly cited publications, source: CWTS, updated in September each year
Public R&D intensity (public expenditure on R&D as % of GDP): source: Eurostat, updated in March and November each year
Business R&D intensity (business enterprise expenditure on R&D as % of GDP): source: Eurostat, updated in March and November each year
Public expenditure on R&D (government expenditure on R&D plus higher education expenditure on R&D) financed by business enterprise (not including financing from
abroad) as % of GDP: source: Eurostat, updated in March and November each year
Ease of Doing Business: source: World Bank, updated once a year (October)