National R&D and Patenting: Is New Zealand an Outlier?

We analyse patterns of national R&D and patenting activity across developed countries, accounting for factors that may impact on small, distant countries. Once we control for the effects of economic size, distance, sectoral composition and firm size, New Zealand is not an outlier in its per capita patenting performance or its level of R&D expenditure. Nor is the private sector share of R&D expenditure unusually low. If anything, New Zealand has a higher than expected private sector R&D share and slightly 'over-performs ' in terms of patenting and R&D activity. We discuss some implications of the results for New Zealand's national innovation system.