Trends of business enterprise expenditure on R&D before and after global economic crisis: evidence from selected SEE countries

The latest economic crisis in 2008, with a source on the mortgage market of the USA, spilled, to a lesser or greater extent, over all European and non-European economies. One of the significant features of this crisis is reflected in the raising bank loans and tightening lending terms. State budget deficit in the conditions of the crisis imposes the need for fiscal consolidation, thus reducing the capacity of the state to provide financial support to the business sector. In this regard, these developments may have an adverse effect on the level of R&D expenditure of the business sector, which in turn leads to a decrease in quality or a complete suspension of R&D activities. Nevertheless, innovative companies willing to take the risk, as well as governments that have set the increase of expenditures on R&D as a strategic goal of their economic policies, can be taken as an explanation for unchanged or increased R&D expenditure in the time of crisis. Empirical research was conducted for the period 2004–2012 on a sample of 10 South-Eastern European (SEE) countries. The results of the survey show that the business sector had higher spending on R&D activities after the economic crisis, at the SEE region-level. At the country level, business sector in Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Serbia and Slovenia had higher R&D expenditures after 2008, while in Croatia, Romania, Slovakia and North Macedonia, there was no significant difference in the level of R&D expenditures before and after the crisis