Innovation Investment and Economic Recovery A Green Paper for Successful Economic Policies

Prepared for a Workshop to be held at Birkbeck's School of Business, Economics and Informatics on 23 February 2017. The world has not yet emerged from the consequences of the economic crisis of 2008. But it seems clear that the crisis today has affected different countries and regions more than others, and this led to substantial changes in the relative positions of economic strength of countries and regions. While emerging countries are continuing to catch-up with the Triad, some observable differences are also affecting the economic growth patterns of the United States, Europe and Japan. The United States has so far more successfully managed to grow through innovations in a variety of key areas (from ICTs to bio-tech). Europe and Japan are rather lagging behind this performance of the US, and this is visible in a range of economic indicators. Our verdict, and argued as such in this report, is that European countries are not capitalizing fully on their competences and capabilities for economic recovery. What to do, to design the right policies, is to identify the right questions, to compile the available evidence and benchmark countries and regional performance.