Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

R&D in Austria
In 2017, R&D expenditure increased in nominal terms 
by 7.53% compared to 2015, to a total of €11,290 
billion (2015: €10,499 billion). Since the nominal GDP 
has increased by 7.56% – almost the same amount 
over the period– there was no increase in the re-
search intensity figure, in contrast to the previous 
period; this remained steady at 3.05% for 2017. The 
largest proportion of R&D expenditure was attribut-
ed to the business enterprise sector, with 69.9%, and 
the second largest to the higher education sector 
with 22.4%; the government sector accounted for 
7.1% and the private non-profit sector 0.5%.
The proportion of total funding provided by the 
enterprise sector increased, due to the new classifi-
cation of the research premium as enterprise fund-
ing, from 49.7% in 2015 to 54.7% in 2017. If the re-
search premium volume of €637.4 million is subtract-
ed, then the proportion from the business enterprise 
sector is 49.0%. Thus, if the figures are adjusted for 
the research premium element, the share of funding 
provided by the enterprise sector fell slightly in this 
period, by 0.7 percentage points. The proportion 
from the public sector comprised 27.6% in 2017, but 
if this figure is corrected to allow for the research 
premium and the higher education sector, which for 
2017 is no longer included in the public sector, then 
the proportion is 34.0% – an increase of 0.8 percent-
age points. Funding from abroad, and from the EU as 
a sub-category of this sector, remain unchanged at 
16.6% and 1.9% respectively. The shares from the pri-
vate non-profit sector and the higher education sec-
tor in 2017 amount to 0.3% and 0.8% respectively. 
Table 1-1 shows the volumes and proportions of R&D 

---