Industry R&D intensity distributions: regularities and underlying determinants

Chang-Yang Lee ()

Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 2002, vol. 12, issue 3, 307-341

Abstract: This paper aims to examine the nature of the distributions of firm R&D intensities within industries and explore the factors that underlie the industry R&D intensity distributions. In particular, following the seminal study by Cohen and Klepper (1992) and using some new and rich data on firm R&D intensities for seven industries across six countries, this study examines the regularities in the industry R&D intensity distributions and demonstrates, based on a simple model of firm R&D, that the industry R&D intensity distributions are governed by the distributions of technological competence, a measure of firm R&D productivity, which corresponds to the notion of the "unobserved R&D-related capabilities" suggested by Cohen and Klepper (1992). This study found that firm R&D intensities within industries are lognormally distributed, displaying a strikingly regular pattern across industries, that the industry distributions of the levels of technological competence are also lognormal, and that, based on the formal model of firm R&D and the notion of the unobserved R&D-related capabilities, the distribution of firm technological competence within an industry underlies the industry's firm R&D intensity distribution.

Keywords: R&D; intensity; distributions; -; Lognormal; distribution; -; Technological; competence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-07-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/00191/papers/2012003/20120307.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted

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:spr:joevec:v:12:y:2002:i:3:p:307-341

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/191/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Evolutionary Economics is currently edited by Uwe Cantner, Elias Dinopoulos, Horst Hanusch and Luigi Orsenigo

More articles in Journal of Evolutionary Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().