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OECD Taxonomy of Economic Activities Based on R&D Intensity
New taxonomy of industries according to their level of R&D intensity - the ratio of R&D to value added within an industry. Manufacturing and non-manufacturing activities are clustered into five groups (high, medium-high, medium, medium-low, and low R&D intensity industries), drawing on new and expanded evidence from most OECD countries and some partner economies.
Type of content:
Assets
Type of asset:
Code list / Ontology / Taxonomy / Vocabulary
Big data potential
Yes
Policy domains:
Economy & Finance
Open license availability
No
Ease of use
High
| SWOT Analysis for OECD Taxonomy of Economic Activities Based on R&D Intensity |
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|---|---|---|
| Helpful | Harmful | |
Internal |
Strengths• Focuses on a measure of R&D performance intensity as the defining criterion that is an indicative but insufficient measure of high technology • It extends the analysis of R&D intensity to economic activities in services: covering not only manufacturing but also nonmanufacturing industries, namely agriculture, mining, utilities, construction and a broad range of services • It is based on the latest revision of the International Standard Industrial Classification, ISIC Revision 4. |
Weaknesses• Measuring R&D intensity or embedded R&D in their purchases may not effectively characterise the innovative performance of firms or industries • R&D intensity may be a rather imperfect indicator of other concepts such as reliance on/use of highly educated personnel, advanced technology or wider forms of knowledge-based capital. • Delimitation between the medium and the medium-low R&D intensity industries, where there is a fairly small distance between the extremes • Risk that for some industries, their measured R&D intensity may be under- or over-stating the true global picture as a result of missing economies like Brazil, India or China, whose share in the global industry’s value added and R&D may differ according to specialisation or other factors. • The robustness of the taxonomy over time cannot be completely verified as it is not possible to create a balanced sample across years. Although historical data are available in the National Accounts as National offices produce back-calculations when new industrial classifications are adopted, this is not generally the case for R&D data. • It is not possible at present to fully test whether the rise in absolute levels of R&D intensity in some industries in the OECD area has been associated to a fall in their share of global value added. |
External |
Opportunities• Support the pooled presentation of various statistics for groups of industries when R&D is deemed to be a relevant discriminant factor across a number of countries. Within a particular country, a given industry can be more or less R&D intensive that for the aggregate reported here • May be expanded on in the future as evidence collected under the guidelines of the revised Frascati Manual 2015 enables a more accurate assessment of R&D performance and use within and across industries. |
Threats• There can be significant heterogeneity across economies in terms of the absolute and relative R&D intensity of specific industries, reflecting what role an economy’ s industry plays in the global context. • It is not possible to construct measures of R&D intensity at a detailed industry level for a number of major OECD partner economies. Ideally, these R&D intensity measures should be constructed on a global basis in order to ensure that entire industry value chains are captured |
