Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

1. Current Trends
21
performance in the business enterprise sector as a 
proportion of the total volume has therefore in-
creased again despite the smaller growth. The same 
is true for the funding of R&D in the enterprise sec-
tor: although the growth in R&D funding from the 
government has increased by a higher factor, compa-
ny-internal funding has increased much more sharply 
in absolute terms, with €2,107 million, than funding 
from the public sector (= total from federal govern-
ment, regional governments, local governments and 
other public funding) at €401 million (including the 
research premium and the higher education sector). 
The picture is similar for funding from sources abroad 
other than the EU, which largely means foreign firms: 
in relative terms this has risen modestly at 42.7%, 
but in absolute terms the total value of €470 million 
represents the second-largest growth, after that 
from Austrian companies. The increase in R&D per-
formance in the higher education sector is largely 
funded by the federal government, in both absolute 
and relative terms.
Fig. 1-5 provides more detail for the data in Table 
1-2, showing the structure of funding within the sec-
tors of performance for 2007, 2015 and 2017 as per-
centages. The reduction in public funding for 2017 
can be attributed to the new categorisation of the 
research premium discussed above. There is a paral-
lel increase in funding for R&D in the enterprise sec-
tor provided by the companies themselves. Signifi-
cant changes occurred only in funding from the pri-
vate non-profit sector (PNP), however due to the 
small volumes involved this has very little impact 
overall.
Fig. 1-6 gives an overview of the OECD countries 
for the year 2017, both with regard to R&D intensity 
and to the proportions of funding. The countries with 
the highest research intensity are Israel (4.82%), the 
Republic of Korea (4.29%) and Switzerland (3.37%). 
Sweden, the EU country with the highest R&D inten-
sity (3.37%), is in fourth position in the OECD, fol-
lowed by Japan (3.21%), Germany (3.07%) and Den-
mark (3.05%). Austria’s research intensity of 3.05%