The Transformation of R&D in the Post-Socialist Countries: Patterns and Trends

Abstract

Contemporary R&D trends in the economies in transition (EIT) are determined by a complex of economic, social, institutional, and political factors that often pull in opposite directions. Drastic transformations of national R&D systems in this geographic area have been accompanied by inevitable losses, not just of their obsolete components, as widely described in the international literature. However, one can also observe structural shifts which reflect the evolution of national R&D systems from politically and institutionally predetermined complexes to economically justified organisms, but have been much less systematically analysed in terms of standard statistical definitions and indicators. With this in mind, the author has attempted to collect and analyse available data for eight major countries in the area, namely Bulgaria (BG), the Czech Republic (CZ), Hungary (HU), Poland (PO), Romania (RO), the Russian Federation (RU), Slovakia (SK), and Ukraine (UA). Efforts to revise national statistical systems according to the OECD Frascati standards have been initiated in all these countries since political and economic transformation started in the late 1980s-early 1990s. But the degree of success in standardising R&D statistics has varied from one country to another. Furthermore, in most cases revisions of statistical concepts and classifications were not accompanied by re-estimation of past data series. As a result, national data series continue to differ in terms of time series continuity, use of proper sectoral classifications, coverage of expenditures, and availability of specific breakdowns. So the author has had to recalculate the data series, to put them into a common framework of standardised OECD definitions and classifications.² This permits analysis of R&D trends in the EITs in a comparative perspective, taking into account both their similar origin and current diversity.

1

This paper is based on the author’s contribution to the Second European Report on S&T Indicators 1997 (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 1997, Chapter 8a).