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
