The Search for R&D Spillovers

Abstract

Technical change ia the reault of conscious economic investments and explicit decisions by many different economic units.2. Unless there are significant externalities, apillovers, or other sources of social increasing returns, it is unlikely that economic growth can proceed at a constant, undiminished rate into the future. The first observation is not new. It has been articulated by Criliches (1957, 1958. and 1964), Mansfield (1968), Schisookier (1966), Schultz (1954 and many others. The second point, the importance of externalities for growth theory and for the explanation of productivity growth is the driving force behind the research effort to be surveyed here. Whether R&D spillovere will allow us to escape the fate of disinishing returns, depends on their empirical magnitude, which is indeed the topic of this psper.Before we turn to it, however, we need to stake a brief detour into taxonomy.Both publicly supported snd privately funded R&D produces ideas and information ahout new materials or compounds, about new ways of arranging or using them, end shout new ways of designing new good or services for the 1 satisfaction of potential wants of consumers and producers. Often the idea or compound are embodied in a new product or range of products. In that case, the social returns to the particular stream of R&D expenditures can be measured by the sum of the producer and consumer surplus generated by it. Consider, for

The impact of public basic research on industrial innovation: Evidence from the pharmaceutical industry

“…The belief that academic research creates new knowledge fueling technological opportunities has a long history in economics (Griliches 1979(Griliches , 1992Klevorick et al 1995). Growth theorists use the nonrivalrous nature of new knowledge to explain growth in income per capita and to introduce the possibility of increasing returns to scale (Aghion and Howitt 2005;Jones 2005).…”

Innovation and Firms’ Productivity Growth in Slovenia: Sensitivity of Results to Sectoral Heterogeneity and to Estimation Method

“…5 Early models developed by economists affiliated with the NBER incorporate a variable that captured the 'economically valuable technological knowledge', or what Griliches (1979) termed 'knowledge capital' and said very little regarding what knowledge is, or regarding how it becomes important for innovation and growth. These models focused 5 Relevant reviews of the literature include Nadiri (1991), Griliches (1992), Mairesse and Mohnen, (1995), Cincera (1998), and Wieser (2005). mainly on the relationship between R&D activity and productivity growth within a production function framework (Wieser, 2005) that includes 'knowledge capital' in addition to the traditional inputs.…”

Access regulation and infrastructure investment in the mobile telecommunications industry

“…Foros (2004), Woroch (2004), and Kotakorpi (2006), among others, forwarded this argument. Griliches (1992) emphasized that investment spillovers are different from knowledge spillovers. In fact, under certain conditions in the mobile access market, MNOs are willing to give access to their networks voluntarily.…”