EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Exploring the Relationship between R&D and Productivity: A Country-Level Study

Claudio Bravo-Ortega and Alvaro Garcia-Marin

Working Papers from University of Chile, Department of Economics

Abstract: Research and development (R&D) has been considered a source of growth in productivity starting from Schultz (1953). Since then, significant research has studied this relationship at the firm, industry and country level. However, at the country level, most of the empirical studies assessing the R&D-productivity relationship often fail to consider the possible simultaneity of these variables. Do more productive countries invest more on R&D or does the higher level of R&D investment lead to higher levels of productivity? Do both relationships occur at the same time? Using a 65-country panel for the time period of 1960-2000, this study provides evidence that the relationship is mainly based on investment in R&D and not the reverse. In addition, we found that per capita R&D expenditure is strongly exogenous to productivity. These results suggest that, on average, those countries making the most effort in the R&D sector will be more productive in the future. Finally, we present evidence those points out a strong relationship between R&D and productivity in terms of both magnitude and significance.

Keywords: Innovation; Growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O11 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.uchile.cl/uploads/publicacion/98d3 ... 5ea-c16b6d942ab8.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Exploring the Relationship Between R&D and Productivity: A Country-Level Study (2008) Downloads
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:udc:wpaper:wp282

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Chile, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mohit Karnani ().

 
Page updated 2025-04-01
Handle: RePEc:udc:wpaper:wp282