Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

Total
11,290
100 Total
11,290
100
11,290
100
Source: Statistics Austria. Calculations: WPZ Research.
Fig. 1-3: R&D performance and funding, 2017
Company R&D sub-sector 
7.706 Mio. €
Institutes’ sub-sector 
183 Mio. €
Abroad
Public sector 
807 Mio. €
Higher education sector 
2.533 Mio. €
Business enterprise sector
5.958 Mio. €
143 Mio. €
30 Mio. €
1.601 Mio. €
200 Mio. €
93 Mio. €
2.164 Mio. €
130 Mio. €
84 
Mio
. €
Note: For reasons of clarity, the private non-profit sector and flows from the higher education sector are not shown with the exception of own funding, 
which is assigned to the public sector in terms of source of funds. “Abroad” includes the EU. 
Source: Statistics Austria. Calculations and graphic: WPZ Research.

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20
Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020
new category definitions described at the begin-
ning of this section, the value of research carried 
out by the institutes’ sub-sector (“Kooperativer 
Bereich”) has decreased in comparison to previous 
years, while that of the public sector has increased 
correspondingly. Similarly the volume of public-
ly-funded research carried out in the business en-
terprise sector has fallen due to the new interpreta-
tion of the research premium.
Fig. 1-4 shows funding streams in the years 2007 
and 2017. The “Total” column for 2017 illustrates the 
values of research activity in each sector of perfor-
mance, as shown in Table 1-1, as proportions of the 
total value. The other columns divide the total value 
of each source of funds according to the proportions 
allocated to each sector of performance. The enter-
prise sector total of €6,170 million shown in Table 1-1 
is thus split into 96.6% for the business enterprise 
sector itself, 1.13% for the government sector, 0.21% 
for the private non-profit sector, and 2.1% for the 
higher education sector, with analogous splits for all 
other sources of funds. The sources of funds shown 
under “Abroad excl. EU” includes mainly for-
eign-based firms, with the majority of funding in this 
category being allocated to R&D facilities within 
Austrian companies. Of public funding (= federal 
government + regional governments + local govern-
ments + other public funding), 9.30% goes to the 
business enterprise sector, representing 3.68% of 
funding in that sector. Due to the new classification 
of the research premium described above, which was 
introduced in 2017, this proportion is smaller than in 
2007. Comparability is also limited by the above-men-
tioned re-classification of the higher education 
sector, valid since 2017, and the new classification of 
the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) and the 
JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft 
mbH as government institutions.
Despite this limited comparability, some conclu-
sions can nevertheless be drawn from the 2017 data, 
by combining the higher education sector and the 
research premium as funding sources with the feder-
al government, for better comparability. Table 1-2 
shows the development between 2007 and 2017, 
both in absolute terms and in relative terms. In abso-
lute terms, the volume of research performance has 
increased most substantially in the business enter-
prise sector with a nominal total of €3,043 million, 
but in relative terms the increase is greatest in the 
government sector, at 119.6%. The volume of R&D