Looking at the Knowledge Economy: Some Issues on Theory and Evidence

Innovation activities contribute essentially to the regional dimension and growth. The technological infrastructure and innovation capabilities affect not only the regional growth, but also the whole periphery and economy as well. In the last decades, OECD /introduced some measures and indexes, concerning the Research and Development Expenditures, patents etc., that measuring the innovation activities. However, there are a lot of problems and questions regarding the measurement of innovation activities at a regional level. This paper attempts to analyze the whole framework of innovation statistics and in particular to examine the measurement and also the statistical estimation of innovation activities. On this context, it’s also aiming to emphasize and to review the appropriate techniques, the most common methods and the particular problems.