R&D Spending - Ranking 2006
In 2006, Israel (4.02%), Sweden (3.48%), and Finland (3.33%) ranked highest in r&d spending among all countries. Bosnia and Herzegovina ranked lowest at 0.02%.
Data & analysis
- Israel — 6.90
- Korea — 5.65
- United States — 4.09
- Belgium — 3.90
- Sweden — 3.50
The 2025 World Bank data on R&D spending as a percentage of GDP reveals a stark global divide in innovation investment. Israel leads at 6.8995%, followed by Korea at 5.6479% and the United States at 4.0901%, indicating that top performers are typically advanced economies with strong technology sectors and government-backed research ecosystems. These nations prioritize knowledge-based growth, embedding R&D into national strategy. At the bottom, Myanmar’s negative value of -0.0115% and Trinidad and Tobago’s 0.025% reflect economies reliant on resource extraction or agriculture, where institutional capacity for research is minimal and private-sector incentives are weak. The 2025 snapshot thus captures a persistent structural gap: high-income countries invest in innovation as a cycle, while lower-income ones remain trapped in low-value production. Forward-looking, the leaderboard could be reshuffled if emerging economies like China or India substantially increase their R&D intensity, or if global shifts in technology diffusion enable smaller nations to leapfrog into specialized research niches.
| Rank | Country | Value | YoY % |
|---|---|---|---|