%0 Journal Article %T A Note on the Drivers of R&D Intensity %A Az¨¨le Mathieu %A Bruno van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie %J Research in World Economy %D 2010 %I %R 10.5430/rwe.v1n1p56 %X This research note evaluates the extent to which national industrial structure affects country rankings based on aggregate R&D intensity. The econometric analysis performed on a cross-country cross-industry panel dataset (21 industrial sectors, 18 countries, and 5 years) suggests that accounting for industrial structure substantially affects the traditional country rankings. Sweden, the USA, France and Japan have an ¡®above-than-average¡¯ R&D intensity in most industries, whereas the high level of aggregate R&D intensity in South Korea and Finland, for instance, is essentially due to the importance of R&D-intensive industries in their economy (telecom and computers), and not to a macroeconomic environment particularly favourable to R&D. The US, Japanese and Swedish ¡®exceptions¡¯ might result from higher ¡®expected¡¯ returns to R&D in these countries. %U http://www.sciedu.ca/journal/index.php/rwe/article/view/8