Have R&D spillovers changed?

Nicholas Bloom, Brian Lucking and John van Reenen

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: This paper revisits the results of Bloom, Schankerman, and Van Reenen (2013) examining the impact of R&D on the performance of US firms, especially through spillovers. We extend their analysis to include an additional 15 years of data through 2015, and update the measures of firms' interactions in technology space and product market space. We show that the magnitude of R&D spillovers appears to have been broadly similar in the second decade of the 21st Century as it was in the mid-1980s. However, there does seem to have been some increase in the wedge between marginal social returns to R&D and marginal private returns with the ratio of marginal social to private returns increasing to a factor of 4 from 3. There is certainly no evidence that the need to subsidize R&D has diminished. Positive spillovers appeared to increase in the 1995-2004 boom.

Keywords: innovation; RD; patents; productivity and spillovers; growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F23 O31 O32 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-ino and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Have R&D spillovers changed? (2018)
Working Paper: Have R&D Spillovers Changed? (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1548

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