Autumn update of the STI Monitor: Significant changes in environment and climate, circular economy

Significant changes in the areas of environment and climate, circular economy and financing; the improvement in effectiveness is due to the significantly greater deterioration in the comparison countries.

Environment and climate

The strongest negative change is in the area of environment and climate, primarily driven by Austria’s deterioration in RD expenditure (both as a percentage of GDP and as a percentage of GBAORD). However, the fact that Austria continues to fall behind the group of the innovation leaders is not due to a decline in the funds spent, but rather to the fact that Finland has almost doubled its expenditure in the meantime.

Circular economy

The significant improvement in the circular economy is due to indicators that describe the economic impact, such as gross investment as a percentage of GDP. However, this positive development is a statistical artefact, as Eurostat has used a different data basis for the indicators on investment, value added and employment since the last update of the STI Monitor in January 2023, but has retained the indicator definitions.

Financing

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Indirect business funding, which increased significantly from 2019 to 2020, continued its trend in the January 2023 update.

There have also been improvements in the area of financing, with a further increase in overall business funding. Indirect business funding, which increased significantly from 2019 to 2020, continued its trend in the January 2023 update. The OECD has since updated its data on direct business funding, which means that the positive trend in business funding as a whole is now even stronger.

Effectiveness

In the area of effectiveness, Austria’s unemployment rate has improved significantly relative to the Innovation Leaders, but this is due to the fact that the unemployment rate in the comparison countries has deteriorated much more strongly.

New features

With the autumn update, new features have been added to the STI Monitor: In order to provide users with even more information to contextualise and interpret the data and correlations, the indicators of the STI-relevant Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the goals of the European Green Deal were linked to the corresponding areas of the STI Monitor.

The next major update of the STI Monitor will be published in May/June 2024.