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Too little or too much R&D?

Maria J. Alvarez-Pelaez and Christian Groth ()
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Maria J. Alvarez-Pelaez: Universidad de Málaga

Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Maria Jose Alvarez Pelaez ()

No 02-01, Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics

Abstract: According to the first generation models of endogenous growth based on expanding product variety, the market economy unambiguously generates too little R&D. Later, by disentangling returns to specialization from the market power parameter, it was shown that with sufficiently low returns to specialization too much R&D can occur. The present paper takes a step further, disentangling the market power parameter from the capital share in final output. We show that this helps finding too much R&D as well. In addition, by differentiating between net and gross returns to specialization it is demonstrated what drives the differing inefficiency results in this literature. The decisive factor behind excessive R&D is the implicit presence of negative externalities of increased specialization. Empirically, an advantage of the more general framework is better agreement with the observed level of markups and the observed falling tendency of the patent/R&D ratio.

Keywords: Endogenous growth; Research and development; Expanding product variety; Surplus appropriability problem; Creative destruction; Optimal growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O33 O41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2002-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-ino
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Journal Article: Too little or too much R&D? (2005) Downloads
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