Productivity and R and D at the Firm Level

Zvi Griliches and Jacques Mairesse

No 826, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper analyzes the relationship between output, employment, and physical and R&D capital, for a sample of 133 large U.S. firms covering the years 1966 through 197. In the cross sectional dimension, there is a strong relationship between firm productivity and the level of its R&D invespments. In the time dimension, using deviations from fire means as obserrations and unconstrained estimation, this relationship bomes closa to vanishing. This may be due, in part, to the increase in collinearity between trend, physical capital, and R&D cap)tal in the within dimension, leaving little ildependent variability there. When the coefficients of the first two variables are constrained to reasonable values, the R&D coefficient is both sizeable and significant. The possibility of simultaneity between output and employment decisions in the short run is also investigated. Allowing for this via the use of a semi-reduced form equations system yields rather high estimates of the importance of R&D capital relative to physical capital. Our data do not allow us, however, to answer any detailed questions about the lag structure of the effects of R&D on productivity. These effects are apparently highly variable, both in timing and magnitude.

Date: 1981-12
Note: PR
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Published as Griliches, Zvi and Jacques Mairesse. "Productivity and R&D at the Firm Level." R&D, Patents and Productivity, edited by Zvi Griliches. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, (1984), pp. 339-374.
Published as Productivity and R&D at the Firm Level , Zvi Griliches. in R&D and Productivity: The Econometric Evidence , Griliches. 1998

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