How Soon Could Romania Close the R&D Gaps against EU-28?

Increasing EU's Gross domestic expenditure on research and development (R&D) at 3% of the GDP is one of the five EU headline targets included in Europe 2020 strategy. Higher R&D investments in member states, as well as the design and implementation of adequate national research and development policies should not only reduce disparities with respect to R&D, but also foster economic growth and stimulate convergence. Romanian national strategies also acknowledge R&D as a priority sector, given its potential to increase labour productivity, competitiveness and economic growth, but up to now there is low convergence of the Romanian R&D system with the European one. In this context, our paper aims to assess the time required to close the gaps in research and development between Romania and the EU by means of catching-up computational methods. We analyze the likelihood of equalizing EU average using data on various indicators in the R&D field over 2005-2012. The necessary growth rate to achieve this goal is estimated under different scenarios: pessimistic, realistic and optimistic. We found that the time span required to fill the Romanian R&D system's gaps against EU varies between 5 and 25 years, depending on the indicator considered. Unfortunately, there are also R&D indicators for which the gaps got larger over 2005-2012, therefore catching-up is unlikely on the short run. As regards the Summary Innovation Index, efforts to equalize EU-28 average would be considerable since Romania should increase its annual SII rhythm of growth by four times, even in the pessimistic scenario of 30 years time horizon.