R&D and Productivity in the US and the EU: Sectoral Specificities and Differences in the Crisis

Davide Castellani, Mariacristina Piva, Torben Schubert and Marco Vivarelli ()

John H Dunning Centre for International Business Discussion Papers from Henley Business School, University of Reading

Abstract: Using data on the US and EU top R&D spenders from 2004 until 2012, this paper investigates the sources of the US/EU productivity gap. We find robust evidence that US firms have a higher capacity to translate R&D into productivity gains (especially in the high-tech industries), and this contributes to explaining the higher productivity of US firms. Conversely, EU firms are more likely to achieve productivity gains through capital-embodied technological change at least in medium and low-tech sectors. Our results also show that the US/EU productivity gap has worsened during the crisis period, as the EU companies have been more affected by the economic crisis in their capacity to translate R&D investments into productivity. Based on these findings, we make a case for a learning-based and selective R&D funding, which - instead of purely aiming at stimulating higher R&D expenditures - works on improving the firms' capabilities to transform R&D into productivity gains.

Keywords: R&D; productivity; economic crisis; US; EU (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O33 O51 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-eff, nep-ent, nep-eur, nep-ino, nep-sbm and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.henley.ac.uk/files/pdf/research/papers- ... Castellani_et_al.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.henley.ac.uk/files/pdf/research/papers-publications/JHD-2016-03_Castellani_et_al.pdf [302 Found]--> https://www.henley.ac.uk/files/pdf/research/papers-publications/JHD-2016-03_Castellani_et_al.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: R&D and productivity in the US and the EU: Sectoral specificities and differences in the crisis (2019)
Working Paper: R&D and Productivity in the US and the EU: Sectoral Specificities and Differences in the Crisis (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rdg:jhdxdp:jhd-dp2016-03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in John H Dunning Centre for International Business Discussion Papers from Henley Business School, University of Reading Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marie Pearson ().