Suchergebnisse

This paper reviews the empirical literature on rates of return on R&D and interprets the economic significance of these estimates using a semi-endogenous growth model with a calibrated knowledge production sector. We analyse how R&D subsidies, a reduction of entry barriers for start-ups and increasing high-skilled labour would contribute towards raising productivity and knowledge investment in the EU. The simulation results show that substantial efforts will have to be made if Europe wants to come close to achieving the Lisbon productivity and knowledge-investment targets. Achieving US standards in all three areas would reduce the productivity gap by about 50 percent. Improving the quality of tertiary education and increasing competition in non-manufacturing sectors would also help the EU to get to the productivity frontier.

Since the mid-1990s the growth performance of the Euro Area as a whole, despite some good individual country performances, has failed to keep pace with developments elsewhere in the EU (including the UK) and also in the US. This is especially the case for a number of the larger Euro Area economies. Despite an encouraging performance in terms of its labour input trends, there has been a significant, offsetting, deterioration in the Euro Area's underlying productivity performance. This is driven in large part, worryingly, by a marked downward shift in the growth rate of total factor productivity. Looking to the future, no significant recovery is predicted in the Euro Area's underlying economic performance over the period 2007–11. While the policy challenge is a serious one, the Euro Area as a whole can take comfort from the fact that the gains from a successful refocusing of its overall reform agenda could be considerable. For example, the progressive introduction of the five key measures linked to the Lisbon strategy (i.e. the services directive; reduction of the administrative burden; improving human capital; 3 per cent R&D target; and increases in the employment rate) could boost the Euro Area's economic and employment growth rates by more than ½ a percentage point annually for more than a decade. Such an outturn would give the Euro Area a potential growth rate of around 2½ per cent, a rate of growth which in per capita terms would be broadly comparable to that of the US over the 2007–15 time period and, on the basis of current trends and policies, slightly better than that of the UK.