Re-definition of research-intensive industries and goods: NIW/ISI/ZEW-Lists 2012

This study presents the new lists of research-intensive industries on the basis of the current classification of economic activities (NACE Rev. 2) as well as foreign trade (SITC Rev. 4), which replace the older NIW/ISI-Lists from the year 2006. The new lists are based on the sectoral business enterprise R&D expenditures for production on the international scale in the years 2008 and 2009 (cross-section). Hereby, only highly aggregated economic sectors, mostly at the 2-digit level, are considered. For the definition of research-intensive industries, a threshold of 3% of R&D expenditure on sales, the threshold for the leading-edge technologies lies at 9%. Unlike in previous lists, the chemical and electrical industries do currently not count to the most research-intensive industries in a global perspective, as the R&D intensity for these sectors as a whole lags behind the industry average. Based on the more coarse-grained international list (2-digit level), new lists of research-intensive industries for Germany at the 3- and 4-digit level were developed, which allow more sophisticated analyzes of research-intensive sectors within the German economy. These 3- and 4-digit lists for Germany build on additional sources of information and data. It turns out that the group of industries that is taken into account in the new lists after the reevaluation has become slightly narrower. In quantitative terms, this becomes especially noticeable in the area of high-level technologies, while the leading-edge technologies have kept their relative structural weight within the manufacturing sector in Germany. In addition, first calculations on foreign trade show that the leading-technology segment occupies a slightly larger weight from a German perspective according to the new definition, although the overall trading volume of research-intensive goods has decreased.