R&d Expenditure across Countries and Sectors

R&D activities are often considered as being a main driver of economic development, innovation and growth. They comprise creative work undertaken systematically with a view to increasing the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications (Eurostat, 2008: 30). Today innovation performance is a crucial determinant of competitiveness and national progress. For a small country like Croatia Government policy play direct role in fostering innovation across the public investment in biomedicine, manufacturing and innovation research. The literature has convincingly shown that the impact of current R&D on current productivity depends crucially on past R&D. This paper illustrates some recent trend patterns in the Croatia concerning R&D intensity, taking the 3% Barcelona target and the EU average as a benchmark. The objective of this paper is analyzing influence of public R&D and businesses R&D in Croatia on its economic growth. In general, Croatia is still in a process of transition, industrial restructuring and integration into the EU economy. In fact, getting closer to the existing European frontiers in terms of technology, R&D and innovation is quite challenging at national level. This paper presents different indicators, illustrating the increasing importance and the different characteristics of R&D expenditure across countries and sectors.