Uncertainty and Investments in Data and R&D

Siavash Mohades and Maria Savona

No 12230, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This paper investigates whether investments in data affect firms’ R&D and whether the two are productivity-enhancing complements. We conceptualise and test whether investments in data reduce market uncertainty, thereby mitigating the inherent uncertainty of R&D and enhancing research and innovation investment. Using Italian firm-level data from 2002 to 2024 and exploiting the GDPR as an instrument, we identify a positive causal effect of data on R&D investment. Moreover, we find that data and R&D are complementary in enhancing both short- and long-term productivity. Our analyses also identify a positive role of R&D for productivity only when firms are data-intensive.

Keywords: uncertainty; data; R&D; digitalisation; innovation; productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D22 D25 D82 O31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-eur, nep-sbm and nep-tid
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp12230.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:ces:ceswps:_12230

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().