Sectoral growth pattern and innovative performance of technology-intensive sectors in the manufacturing industry in the 2000s

Abstract

In the 2000s, industrial and technological policy initiatives resurfaced. However, a process of structural change was observed in the manufacturing industry, reinforcing the relative importance of less technology-intensive sectors in total value added. In this context, this article aims to evaluate the performance of the most intensive sectors throughout this process, since the portion of expenses they allocate to research and development (R&D), by nature, is higher than the first. When decomposing sectoral growth and analyzing R&D indicators, the results showed an increase in technological efforts, but, at the same time, they suggest a weak association between the growth of those sectors, with no clear positive relationship between the increase in R&D spending and the its growth, despite a more favorable institutional and public policy context at the time.