Efficiency of National Innovation Systems Through the Prism of Composite Innovation Indexes: Do They Tell the Same Story?

Benchmarking countries' innovation performance is one of the key aspects of national innovation systems (NIS) concept. During the evolution of NIS studies, a wide range of methodological approaches to measuring and comparing NIS performance was developed. One of the most popular ways to benchmark NISs is through the use of composite innovation indexes – indicator aggregates aimed at addressing various aspects of NIS performance. The two most prominent innovation indexes today are Global Innovation Index (GII) and European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS). Their measurement frameworks differ significantly and they are both used by policymakers to compare their countries’ innovation performance with the rest of the world. However, composite innovation index approach also met criticism from some authors for oversimplification, partiality, lack of methodological transparency and clarity. A popular way to enhance this way of evaluation is to combine composite indexes with various methods of assessing efficiency. One of them is Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) – a non-parametric efficiency frontier estimation method that is frequently used in innovation studies. In this study, DEA is used to test the equivalence between GII and EIS in order to find whether they can substitute each other in policymaking activities. An additional aim of this study is to look at the position of Russia and identify weaknesses that lead to low ranks in both indexes. It was discovered that Russia is inefficient in terms of both indexes and the reason for inefficiency is that Russian human resources and investments are improperly disposed, resulting in insufficient outputs.