Main trends in the internationalisation of business R&D

We study the internationalization of business R&D from 2001 to 2013 for a number of countries. In contrast to previous papers-which relied on patent data-we employ R&D expenditure data. The paper highlights three major results: first, we find that R&D expenditure of foreign-owned firms has increased faster than R&D expenditure of domestic firms since 2001; second, we find that R&D internationalization at the global level-despite the rise of emerging economies-is still dominated by R&D activities of US firms in Europe, and vice versa. Third, we see an opening of the process, both in terms of the sectors and the countries involved. R&D internationalization in services has gained prominence in particular.