Research and development activities in Belgium: A snapshot of past investment for the country’s future. National Bank of Belgium Working Paper No 373, July 2019

Recent changes in the accounting legislation regarding the accounting and disclosure of research and development (R&D) expenditure in the financial statements have triggered this research on the importance of this kind of activities and their impact at microeconomic level. Using survey data, a solid sample of 1,964 R&D companies was compiled. Based on this sample, some of the main characteristics of R&D firms are presented, such as sector of activity, age, geographic location, etc. In 2016, these 1,964 R&D entities together employed nearly 279,000 people and generated € 45 billion of value added, which represents 6 % of Belgium’s domestic employment and 10.6 % of the country’s gross domestic product. By means of statistical techniques, the microeconomic impact of R&D efforts on average annual growth of value added, average annual employment growth and average annual growth of labour productivity is investigated. Following this research, the conclusion is that R&D investment has generally had a positive impact on average annual growth of value added and average annual employment growth for periods of four years or longer. In a shorter timespan (less than four years), such a positive impact of R&D involvement could not be demonstrated. For the average annual growth of labour productivity, no evidence of any difference between the R&D and the non-R&D group was found