Duplicative research, mergers and innovation

Vincenzo Denicolo and Michele Polo

No 12511, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We show that in the model of Federico, Langus and Valletti (2017) [A simple model of mergers and innovation, Economics Letters, 157, 136-140] horizontal mergers may actually spur innovation by preventing duplication of R&D efforts. This possibility is more likely, the greater is the value of innovations, the less rapidly diminishing are the returns to R&D, and the more highly correlated are the R&D projects of different firms. Federico, Langus and Valletti (2017) do not obtain this result because they focus only on the case in which the merged firm spreads total R&D expenditure evenly across the individual research units of the merging firms -- a strategy which is optimal, however, only if the returns to R&D diminish sufficiently rapidly.

Keywords: Horizontal mergers; Innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-cse, nep-ino, nep-mic and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP12511 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Duplicative research, mergers and innovation (2018)
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:cpr:ceprdp:12511

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP12511

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().