Service Lives of R&D Assets for UK National Accounts from 2014

Office for National Statistics research compares estimates for the useful life of Research and Development assets. The work is based on new survey questions and patent administration data, supporting the capitalisation of R&D in the UK National Accounts from 2014. This suite of three articles presents the supporting material and findings.

Use Cases

• Calibrate depreciation rates for R&D capital stock models based on estimated service lives.
• Compare methodologies for measuring intangible asset life using survey and administrative patent data.
• Inform policy on R&D investment and innovation accounting within national economic frameworks.

Strengths

• Produced by the UK's Office for National Statistics, the official statistical institute.
• Compares two distinct methodological approaches: survey data and patent administration data.
• Directly supports a major change in UK National Accounts implementation from 2014.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics

Collection Method

Likely contains estimates derived from ONS R&D surveys and patent administration data.

Time Range

Research supports accounting changes from 2014; specific data time range is not stated.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:31:31.653839; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United Kingdom