The Origins of Industrial Scientific Discoveries

James Adams and J. Roger Clemmons

No 13823, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper estimates science production functions for R&D-performing firms in the United States using scientific papers as the measure of output, by analogy with patents. The underlying evidence covers 200 top U.S. R&D firms during 1981-1999 as well as 110 top U.S. universities. We find that industrial science builds on past scientific research inside and outside the firm, with most of the returns to scale in production deriving from outside knowledge. In turn, the largest outside contribution derives from universities rather than firms; this is especially true when papers are weighted by citations received, a measure of their importance. Consistent with the role assigned to knowledge spillovers in growth theory, the importance of outside knowledge, especially that of universities, increases from the firm to the industry level. The findings survive the inclusion of fixed effects, interactions among the effects, variations in sample and specification, and efforts to control for endogeneity.

JEL-codes: D24 L33 O31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-knm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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