The sample is drawn from the Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard published by the IRI/JRC, which tracks the world’s top 1000 firms by R&D spending. Chinese and EU-based pharmaceutical companies form a significant portion of the dataset, making it well-suited for a DID design to compare post-COVID changes in R&D investment across regions. The dataset was restructured into a panel of firm-year observations from 2015 to 2024, covering key variables such as R&D input, capital expenditure, profit, and employment. After excluding entries with missing values in core variables, standard data-cleaning procedures using Stata was implemented. The final analytical sample includes 217 firms, covering 114 Chinese and 103 EU companies, observed over an unbalanced panel structure. Company identity is tracked via the company variable. Key financial indicators such as R&D input, profits, and employees exhibit variation across both time and geography, justifying a panel-data approach.