R&D Expenditures by Industrial Enterprises in Thailand
Keywords:
R&D expenditure by industrial enterprises, national innovation systemAbstract
This paper reviews the importance of R&D, one of the most important factor inputs in the knowledge-based economy, and in government interventions and investments in national innovation systems. It investigates R&D spending of industrial enterprises in Thailand based on survey data by the Industrial Economics Department of the Ministry of Industry. This first part reports descriptive statistics about R&D spending by industrial firms between 2001 and 2006, and reports on some simple hypothesis tests. Econometric techniques were applied to estimate the likely R&D budgets by firm, as well as their actual R&D spending. This paper found that: a) only 8.4 percent of industrial enterprises have R&D budgets, which is rather low by international
standards; b) the sum of R&D budgets over five years amounted to 16,316 million baht; c) the figures show that R&D spending over time is increasing; and d) research intensities varied significantly depending on the industry’s ISIC classification code. The last section discusses the national R&D policy for Thailand and institutional support for that policy leading us to support tax credits and collaboration between industries and universities.
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