International Comparisons of R&D Performance

Data on R&D expenditures by country and region provide a broad picture of the changing distribution of R&D capabilities and activities around the world. R&D data available from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) cover the organization's 34 member countries and 7 nonmembers (OECD 2013). The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO's) Institute for Statistics provides data on additional countries (UNESCO 2013). The discussion in this section draws on both of these data sets.

Cross-national comparisons of R&D expenditures and funding necessarily involve currency conversions. The analysis in this section uses the international convention of converting foreign currencies into U.S. dollars via purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates (for a discussion of this methodology, see Comparing International R&D Expenditures).