OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2015

OECD

• Publisher: OECD
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9789264246256
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

1. Knowledge economies: Trends and features

This chapter presents a range of indicators that highlight long-term trends and characteristics of global knowledge economies. It addresses the following questions: What happened to productivity, firm dynamics, jobs and skills during the recovery? What are the implications for R&D and innovation, global investment and trade flows? What were the sources of growth over the last two decades? What is the role of knowledge-based capital in economies? What is the impact of growing economic interdependencies on jobs and the demand for skills? Are production networks global or regional? Are global value chains consolidating? Who are the emerging players in the new geography of growth? Who are the top players in the science and innovation landscape? How dispersed or how concentrated are economic and innovation activities? How intertwined are the actors in the innovation system? What are the features of scientific research today? How can research “excellence” be identified? What is the best approach to identify how technologies emerge, develop and mature? Who are the top players in new, disruptive technologies? What is the impact of the international mobility of scientists? How “collaborative” is the innovation process? What tools do governments use to support innovation? Indicators accompanied by short texts develop a narrative to help policy makers understand knowledge, science and innovation today.

• The growth and jobs challenge
• The new geography of innovation and growth
• Science and innovation today
• Notes

The growth and jobs challenge

Productivity and jobs challenge

The world today continues to feel the effects of the economic downturn seven years after the start of the crisis. In 2010, strong productivity growth signalled the start of a global recovery, however the pace of recovery has been unusually weak and labour productivity growth in the OECD area remains below pre-crisis levels. The failure to achieve a stronger cyclical upswing has had very real costs in terms of foregone employment, stagnant living standards in advanced economies, less vigorous development in some emerging economies, and rising inequality nearly everywhere (OECD, 2015a). The BRIICS (Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, Indonesia, the People’s Republic of China and South Africa) economies were affected by the global slowdown to a lesser extent, with productivity growing at over 6% in 2009-14, compared to 1% in the OECD area. In China, GDP per employee grew at around 9% a year, compared to the 11% annual growth enjoyed in 2002-07.

1. Labour productivity growth based on hours worked, total economy level, 2001-14

Average annual growth rates in percentage points

Source: OECD, Productivity Database, www.oecd.org/std/productivity-stats, May 2015.

StatLink http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888933272766

2. GDP per capita growth and GDP per person employed growth in the BRIICS and the OECD, 2002-07 and 2009-14

Average annual growth rates in percentage points

Source: OECD, Productivity Database, www.oecd.org/std/productivity-stats, May 2015. See chapter notes.

StatLink http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888933272771

Job recovery is becoming more widespread and gaining momentum with unemployment declining in most countries, including those hardest hit by the crisis (OECD, 2015b). The OECD-wide unemployment rate declined by 1.6 percentage points from a post-war high of 8.5% in October 2009 to 6.9% in April 2015, with the average unemployment rate in the European Union remaining at almost 10%. However, youth employment rates remain of particular concern, especially in Europe, with average unemployment rates for younger workers (15-24 years old) at over 20%, rising to above 40% in Spain, Greece and Italy. Employment growth varied widely for different groups during the recovery, with unemployment rates for women slightly above those for men.

3. Unemployment rates in the OECD, gap between younger and older workers 2008-14 and differences by country in 2014

Percentage points

Source: OECD, Short-Term Labour Market Statistics Database, May 2015. See chapter notes.

StatLink http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888933272781

4. Harmonised unemployment rates in the OECD, European Union, United States and Japan, July 2008-April 2015

Percentage points

Source: OECD, Short-Term Labour Market Statistics Database, June 2015.

StatLink http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888933272794

Firm dynamics and jobs

In the first decade of the 21st century, the job reallocation rate, as measured by the churning rate (i.e. the sum of job destruction and job creation rates) remained relatively stable. Prior to the crisis, the gap between job creation and job destruction was comparatively small, reflecting a Schumpeterian process of creative destruction which reallocates employment from firms destroying jobs to firms creating jobs. The 2008 economic crisis had a significant impact on this process, resulting in a sharp increase in gross job destruction and a drop in gross job creation. This gap contracted only partially over the 2009-10 biennium, with creation and destruction rates eventually aligning to pre-crisis levels during the following period.

5. Job creation, job destruction and churning rate, 2001-11

Unweighted average across countries, index 2006-07 = 100

Source: OECD, calculations based on the DynEmp v.2 Database, preliminary data, www.oecd.org/sti/dynemp.htm, July 2015. See chapter notes.

StatLink http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/888933272807

DynEmp and MultiProd: OECD projects on firm-level dynamics and productivity

The DynEmp project is based on a distributed data collection exercise (see Criscuolo et al., 2014b) aimed at creating a harmonised cross-country micro-aggregated database on employment dynamics from confidential micro-level sources. The primary sources of firm and establishment data are national business registers. Analysis of the DynEmp project has shown that young firms are the engines of job creation across all countries considered (see Criscuolo et al., 2014a and 2014c). The new DynEmp v.2 Database contains more detailed data on the within-sector contribution of start-ups and young firms to employment growth, taking into account the role played by national policies and framework conditions (see for example Calvino et al., 2015). Work on the differences in employment dynamics and job reallocation across sectors is ongoing.

MultiProd is a companion project that uses a similar approach to examine the micro drivers of aggregate productivity. The project is presently building a micro-aggregated dataset using business registers and production surveys, with the aim of documenting the heterogeneity of productivity distribution within and across sectors, as well as its impact on aggregate outcomes. In particular, the project will investigate how policy frameworks affect resource allocation and productivity growth, measure the impact of (mis)allocations on aggregate productivity, and explore the link between productivity heterogeneity and wage inequality.

Between 2001 and 2011, entrant...

Table of contents

• Title page
• Legal and rights
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Reader’s guide
• Executive summary
• 1. Knowledge economies: Trends and features
• 2. Investing in knowledge, talent and skills
• 3. Connecting to knowledge
• 4. Unlocking innovation in firms
• 5. Competing in the global economy
• 6. Empowering society with science and technology
• Data sources
• About the OECD