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This paper presents the main resulte from the 2004 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard, whith liste the top 500 EU companies and the top 500 non-EU companies ranked by their R&D investment. After a short description of the definitions and objectives of the exercise, its content and main findings are shown together with results from other analyses performed within The European Common Directorate General, Joint Research (JRC) -Seville, showing the impact of the degree of concentration at the company's level on the overala industrial R&D stance. There seems to be a correlation between R&D intensity growth and net sales growth. Despite a competitive total amount of R&O investment, the average overall R&O intensity of the sampled European Union companies is much smaller than for their non-EU counterparts. This e related to a smaller proportion of output from sectors with high intrinsic R&O intensity, which is particuíarly noticeable in IT Hardware and Software and Computer Services. Although REDO investment amounts are comparable for the biggest firms, the share of R&O performers at the middle and the bottom of the EU-500 Scoreboard is much smaller in the EU than the non-EU. The analysis indicates that national, regional and sectoral patterns deviate considerably from the overall picture of the EU. An entire section of the paper is dedicated to an inter-sector comparison of RE&D-related indicators. The issue of concentration of R&O investment among top companies investing in research is investigated to more detail, in large companies, by sector of activity and by location. It la also proved that the sample of top R&D investing companies is statistically characterised by heteroscedasticity.
