Firm Size and the Nature of Innovation within Industries: The Case of Process and Product R&D

Wesley M Cohen and Steven Klepper

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 1996, vol. 78, issue 2, 232-43

Abstract: The effect of firm size on the allocation of R&D effort between process and product innovation is examined. It is hypothesized that, relative to product innovations, process innovations are less saleable in disembodied form and spawn less growth. This implies that the returns to process R&D will depend more on the firm's output at the time it conducts its R&D than the returns to product R&D. Incorporating this distinction in a simple model, the authors derive and test predictions about how the fraction of R&D devoted to process innovation varies with firm size within industries. Copyright 1996 by MIT Press.

Date: 1996
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (523)

Downloads: (external link)
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034-6535%2819960 ... 0.CO%3B2-G&origin=bc full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.

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:tpr:restat:v:78:y:1996:i:2:p:232-43

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=0034-6535

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Pierre Azoulay, Olivier Coibion, Will Dobbie, Raymond Fisman, Benjamin R. Handel, Brian A. Jacob, Kareen Rozen, Xiaoxia Shi, Tavneet Suri and Yi Xu

More articles in The Review of Economics and Statistics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().