 External R&D and product innovation: Is over-outsourcing an issue?Oliviero Carboni and Giuseppe Medda Economic Modelling, 2021, vol. 103, issue C Abstract: The acquisition of external R&D positively affects the creation of innovative products; however, as external R&D intensity and complexity increase, firms may face higher costs of coordination and control. Recent literature has found evidence of the R&D over-outsourcing problem analyzing single-country small samples of firms. Moreover, most research has overlooked the endogeneity problems that can arise with firms' decisions on R&D. We investigate the external R&D–product innovation association, controlling for different types of research sources in a large collection of firms in five European countries. We find that external R&D enhances innovation outcomes until a certain threshold; beyond this threshold, firms face over-outsourcing. Furthermore, R&D acquired from universities shows to be most effective in promoting product innovations, whereas R&D acquired from firms within the same group has a larger effect on the intensity of innovative product sales. Keywords: External R&D; European firms; Product innovation; Nonlinearity; Econometric models (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:103:y:2021:i:c:s0264999321001905 DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2021.105601 Access Statistics for this article Economic Modelling is currently edited by S. Hall and P. Pauly More articles in Economic Modelling from Elsevier |
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