ABSTRACT
International distribution of R&D activity and new patents Given the very unequal distribution of accumulated material wealth and human skills among nations, it is to be expected that most R&D and inventive activity of the world would be located in the technology frontier area (TFA) and near to it. This is indeed the distribution pattern which emerges from the data. The share of R&D expenditure in GNP in developing countries is only about a fifth of the respective share in the remaining countries, indicating that the concentration of world R&D activity in developed countries is much greater than that of world income. Taking the world total as 100 per cent, developing countries accounted in the 1980s for about 70 per cent of the population, 10 per cent of the R&D personnel, and 4 per cent of the R&D expenditure.
