Corporate Skills as an Ex-Ante Incentive to R&D Investment

Mariacristina Piva () and Marco Vivarelli ()

No 2562, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Abstract: Using a balanced panel of 215 Italian manufacturing firms over the 1995-2000 period, this paper investigates the determinants of R&D investment at the level of the firm. While finding further support for the well-established technology-push and demand-pull hypotheses, this study also tests the role of skill endowment in increasing a firm’s R&D investment. Consistently with the related managerial and economic literature, our basic result is that current skill endowment may significantly and positively influence a firm’s current R&D decision. These microeconometric results have been obtained using a Least Squares Dummy Variable Corrected (LSDVC) estimator, a recently-proposed panel data technique particularly suitable for small samples.

Keywords: skills and innovation; R&D expenditures; endogenous skill bias; demand-pull; LSDVC estimator (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-ino, nep-ipr and nep-tid
Date: Written
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