RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES ACROSS EUROPE: AN EFFICIENCY ANALYSIS USING DEA

By this paper we intend to analyze the existing gap in the efficiency of R&D investment, at European level. The method employed in this respect is Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The evaluation of the performance in R&D in European countries, in terms of technical efficiency (TE) thus constitutes the main goal of this research. Small European economies (i.e. Luxemburg and Sweden) have high levels of research efficiency, while some of the larger ones, namely, United Kingdom, France, and Spain, show lower TE scores. Romania is characterized by a very low rate of knowledge production, suggesting that they are still in the phase of imitating and replicating existing technologies, while only little effort made to innovate.