Comparison of Value Added within EU in Terms of Corporate Investment in Research and Development

Abstract

Globalization has accelerated the growth of innovation in many countries outside the European Union. In order to remain competitive, companies and individual EU economies therefore support the development of innovations through investments in research and development. This contribution is focused on the specification of value added in terms of investments in research and development in the construction and manufacturing sectors. Using statistics of the European Commission for the period 2013 – 2017, a dataset of 269,892 companies in the EU28 countries was generated. The purpose of this contribution is to determine to what extent investment in research and development participates in the creation of value added. A research question was formulated to determine the ideal ratio between value added and investment. Methods: To achieve the objectives set, regression analysis of neural networks was applied using Statistica software. The results of the research indicate that the optimal values in the construction sector were achieved by Great Britain (~EUR 11.3 billion.) and France (~EUR 16.1 billion), and in the manufacturing sector by France (~EUR 11.42 billion), Italy (~EUR 11.41 billion) and Great Britain (~EUR 10.6 billion). The authors consider the method of regression analysis and neural networks to be appropriate for examining the optimal ratio between investment in R&D and value added.