The Role of Industry Classification in the Estimation of Research and Development Expenditures

Christian Awuku-Budu and Carol A. Robbins

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

Abstract: This paper uses data from the National Science Foundation’s surveys on business research and development (R&D) expenditures that have been linked with data from the Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Business Database to produce consistent NAICS-based R&D time-series data based on the main product produced by the firm for 1976 to 2008.The results show that R&D spending has shifted away from domestic manufacturing industries in recent years. This is due in part to a shift in U.S. payrolls away from manufacturing establishments for R&D-performing firms.These findings support the notion of an increasingly fragmented production system for R&D-intensive manufacturing firms, whereby U.S. firms control output and provide intellectual property inputs in the form of R&D, but production takes place outside of the firms' U.S. establishments.

Keywords: Business R&D; industry classification; factoryless goods producers; U.S. manufacturing firms; establishments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2014-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-sbm and nep-tid
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2014/CES-WP-14-45.pdf First version, 2014 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:14-45

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