The Brazilian Statistical Office (IBGE – Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística) conducts every two-three years an innovation survey with Brazilian firms, called PINTEC (Pesquisa de Inovação Tecnológica - Innovation Survey).
One important feature of the data is the availability of a panel structure for many firms. Another important feature is the possibility to combine the PINTEC data with further firm-level data using the unique firm tax number.
The PINTEC survey follows the "Oslo Manual from OECD", which refers to the international guidelines for collecting and interpreting innovation data. The information is confidential and can be used solely for statistical purposes. Firms are obliged by law number 5,534 to respond to IBGE.
Below I provide one example of the variables in the Survey PINTEC 2005, the last survey available for our project.
The main change in the variables happens from PINTEC 2000 to PINTEC 2003. The survey conducted in the year 2000 has the advantage that for few variables coded by the Statistical Office the firm-level information goes back to the initial year 1998. Further waves from the survey following 2000 are PINTEC 2003, PINTEC 2005, and PINTEC 2008.
This is an unofficial translation– it may contain spelling mistakes; Please do not circulate without permission.
Note 1: The main change in the variables happens from PINTEC 2000 to PINTEC 2003, in particular for the variables related to product and process innovation. In 2000, product innovation refers to both questions v07 and v08, and process innovation refers to both questions v10 and v11. On the other hand, starting from the PINTEC 2003 there are more initial questions on firm characteristics.
Note 2: The main new feature of the survey in 2005 is the incorporation of firms in selected service activities (such as in telecommunications and computer science) and R&D activities.
In the paper Flach and Irlacher (2015), we use only information for manufacturing activities.
Codebook – Innovation Survey 2005 (main variables) [pdf]
Readme file – Data sources [pdf]