The contribution of Business services to the export performances of manufacturing industries. An empirical study on 5 European countries

This paper investigates the contribution provided by the Business service sector (BS) to the international competitiveness of manufacturing industries that acquire and use intangible intermediate inputs (in particular those provided by two main BS sub-sectors: “Communication and computer related services” and “Other business activities”). The main valued added of this paper consists of having assessed the role played by BS on the export performances of manufacturing sectors integrating – for a selected number of EU countries - different industry level data sources, namely the OECD Input-Output Tables, the OECD Structural Analysis Database and data provided by the Community Innovation Survey. The results of the empirical analysis show that BS do exert a positive impact on the international competitiveness of manufacturing industries even though these effects vary according to the type of intermediate intangible input acquired and type of user sector.