engineering and technology (11 percent), while the number of scientific publications with international collaboration has remained stable in the last 9 years (2000–08), around 8,700, compared with a total number of publications of around 27,000 (UNESCO, 2010).

The low productivity of research and development (R&D) limits Russia’s supply of “ideas” as the country spends more per patent than countries that are more R&D intensive, implying inefficiency in the innovation process. Even with government R&D expenditures at 66.5 percent of the total, the total share of R&D is relatively low in Russia, alongside a high ratio of expenditures per patent. More advanced economies like Japan and Finland present the opposite situation: it is less costly to patent there, and they spend more on R&D (as measured by lower R&D expenditures per U.S. patent and larger R&D expenditures as a share of GDP) (Figure 4).

**Figure 4: Cost of patenting and gross R&D expenditures, 2008**

<!-- Start of picture text --> 8.5<br>8.3 Turkey<br>Romania<br>8.1 Russia Portugal<br>7.9 China<br>Czech Rep.<br>Poland Slovenia<br>7.7 Slovakia Croatia<br>Spain<br>7.5<br>Hungary<br>Luxembourg<br>7.3<br>Ireland Norway Austria<br>7.1<br>Italy Belgium Iceland UK Sweden<br>France Denmark<br>6.9 Netherlands Germany Finland Israel<br>Canada Switzerland<br>Korea<br>6.7<br>U.S. Japan<br>6.5<br>-0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8<br>Log GERD/GDP<br>Log GERD/Patents granted in the U.S.<br><!-- End of picture text --> Source: Author’s elaboration based OECD (2011), UNESCO (2011), U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (2011), WDI (2011).

Yet in spite of its inefficiencies, the Russian innovation system is relatively strong in certain sectors, as measured by technological advantage (Figure 5). Even with overall low patent productivity, there are niches where Russia’s patent production is concentrated. Russia has a revealed patent advantage (RPA)<sup>2</sup> in four out of five fields of technology – instruments, chemistry, mechanical engineering, and other fields (See Annex II). The sub fields with technological advantage represent the best opportunities for starting up IP based companies as well as developing a market for technology licensing.

Within fields of technology, Russia has a technological/patent advantage in some sub-fields but not in others. Efforts to commercialize research then should concentrate on technologies where Russia has a global comparative advantage. Out of 30 subfields of technology, the two with the highest RPA in Russia are Food chemistry, and Materials and Metallurgy, both from the Chemistry field. The third highest RPA in Russia is in Civil Engineering, the only technology sub-field in the Others field where Russia has a comparative advantage. The fourth to sixth subfields of technology with the highest RPA belong to the Mechanical Engineering field and are: Special Machines, Engines, Pumps, Turbines and Machine tools. The seventh and eighth subfields of technology with the highest RPA are Analysis of Biological Materials

> 2 The revealed _patent_ advantage (RPA) = log(RTA). Revealed _technological_ advantage (RTA) is defined as the share of a country in patents in a given field of technology filed, divided by the country’s share of all patents across all fields of technology in the world

9