International Comparison of R&D Input Performance

Research and development (R&D) activity is the important power to promote innovation ability and the level of our nation. This paper regards the R&D input and output level of twenty countries as the research objects, and makes a comparison analysis of R&D input performance through factor analysis and cluster analysis. In this paper, two factors reflecting R&D input performance of twenty countries are obtained. Twenty countries are classified into four classes: performance-leading, performance-developed, performance-developing and performance-backward. Finally the gap between Chinese and other countries ' R&D input performance level is pointed out.