“Publication metadata What research and innovation (R&I) policies should Europe adopt? The world faces a challenge to rebuild after the pandemic, but also faces the same structural slowdown of productivity growth that occurred in the decades before the COVID crisis. We need to have a plan around innovation policy to address the challenge. We show that Europe is less innovative on many dimensions compared to other advanced regions, such as the US and parts of Asia. We review the econometric evidence on R&I policies and argue that there is good evidence for the efficacy of many of them.”