The Dynamic Impact of Exporting on Firm R&D Investment

Florin Maican, Matilda Orth, Mark Roberts and Vuong Van Anh

No 27986, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This article estimates a dynamic structural model of firm R&D investment in twelve Swedish manufacturing industries and uses it to measure rates of return to R&D and to simulate the impact of trade restrictions on the investment incentives. R&D spending is found to have a larger impact on firm productivity in the export market than in the domestic market. Export market profits are a substantial source of the expected return to R&D. Counterfactual simulations show that trade restrictions lower both the expected return to R&D and R&D investment level, thus reducing an important source of the dynamic gains from trade. A 20 percent tariff on Swedish exports reduces the expected benefits of R&D by an average of 32.2 percent and lowers the amount of R&D spending by 13.9 percent in the high-tech industries. The corresponding reductions in the low-tech industries are 30.4 and 8.9 percent, respectively. R&D adjustments in response to export tariffs mainly occur on the intensive, rather than the extensive, margin.

JEL-codes: F14 L2 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10
Note: IO ITI PR
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published as Florin G Maican & Matilda Orth & Mark J Roberts & Van Anh Vuong, 2023. "The Dynamic Impact of Exporting on Firm R&D Investment," Journal of the European Economic Association, vol 21(4), pages 1318-1362.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27986.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Dynamic Impact of Exporting on Firm R&D Investment (2023)
Working Paper: The Dynamic Impact of Exporting on Firm R&D Investment (2022)
Working Paper: The Dynamic Impact of Exporting on Firm R&D Investment (2020)
Working Paper: The Dynamic Impact of Exporting on Firm R&D Investment (2020)
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:nbr:nberwo:27986

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27986

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().