Growth through Heterogeneous Innovations

Ufuk Akcigit and William Kerr

PIER Working Paper Archive from Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract: We study how exploration versus exploitation innovations impact economic growth through a tractable endogenous growth framework that contains multiple innovation sizes, multi-product firms, and entry/exit. Firms invest in exploration R&D to acquire new product lines and exploitation R&D to improve their existing product lines. We model and show empirically that exploration R&D does not scale as strongly with firm size as exploitation R&D. The resulting framework conforms to many regularities regarding innovation and growth differences across the firm size distribution. We also incorporate patent citations into our theoretical framework. The framework generates a simple test using patent citations that indicates that entrants and small firms have relatively higher growth spillover effects.

Keywords: : Endogenous Growth; Innovation; Exploration; Exploitation; Research and Development; Patents; Citations; Scientists; Entrepreneurs. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L16 O31 O33 O41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 80 pages
Date: 2010-10-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-fdg, nep-ino, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-knm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (120)

Downloads: (external link)
https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/sites/default/file ... ng-papers/10-035.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Growth through Heterogeneous Innovations (2018)
Working Paper: Growth through Heterogeneous Innovations (2016)
Working Paper: Growth through heterogeneous innovations (2013)
Working Paper: Growth Through Heterogeneous Innovations (2012)
Working Paper: Growth Through Heterogeneous Innovations (2010)
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:pen:papers:10-035

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in PIER Working Paper Archive from Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania 133 South 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Administrator (pier@econ.upenn.edu).