Foto: Emīls Desjatņikovs, F64
That investment in research and development (R&D) should help economic growth seems to be a no-brainer. And a consistently high level of R&D spending, measured as a share of GDP, seems to be a precondition for being a prosperous country, as seems evident from Figure 1.
The top 5 countries all post GDP per capita well above the EU average (the most recent list of GDP per capita in the EU28 can be seen here) and all of the bottom 10 have a GDP per capita below the EU average. Outliers are Slovenia and Estonia but this may follow from causality: Whereas richer countries may be better able to afford more R&D spending, it should be higher R&D spending that creates higher future GDP per capita - if so, good news for Estonia and Slovenia.
Figure 1: Spending on research and development (R&D) as a share of GDP, EU28, 2012
