Growth Through Heterogeneous Innovations

Ufuk Akcigit and William Kerr

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: We study how exploration versus exploitation innovations impact economic growth through a tractable endogenous growth framework that contains multiple innovation sizes, multiproduct firms, and entry/exit. Firms invest in exploration R&D to acquire new product lines and exploitation R&D to improve their existing product lines. We model and show empirically that exploration R&D does not scale as strongly with firm size as exploitation R&D. The resulting framework conforms to many regularities regarding innovation and growth differences across the firm size distribution. We also incorporate patent citations into our theoretical framework. The framework generates a simple test using patent citations that indicates that entrants and small firms have relatively higher growth spillover effects.

Keywords: CES; economic; research; micro; data; microdata; endogenous growth; innovation; exploration; exploitation; research and development; patents; citations; scientists; engineers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L16 O31 O33 O41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 80 pages
Date: 2012-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-ent, nep-fdg, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-knm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2012/CES-WP-12-08.pdf First version, 2012 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Growth through Heterogeneous Innovations (2018)
Working Paper: Growth through Heterogeneous Innovations (2016)
Working Paper: Growth through heterogeneous innovations (2013)
Working Paper: Growth Through Heterogeneous Innovations (2010)
Working Paper: Growth through Heterogeneous Innovations (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:12-08

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