Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/35916 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 4657
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
The main objective of this study is to investigate the impact of corporate R&D activities on firms' performance, measured by labour productivity. To this end, the stochastic frontier technique is applied, basing the analysis on a unique unbalanced longitudinal dataset consisting of 532 top European R&D investors over the period 2000-2005. R&D stocks are considered as pivotal input in order to control for their particular contribution to firm-level efficiency. Conceptually, the study quantifies the technical inefficiency of a given company and tests empirically whether R&D activities could explain the distance from the efficient boundary of the production possibility set, i.e. the production frontier. From a policy perspective, the results of this study suggest that - if the aim is to leverage companies' productivity - emphasis should be put on supporting corporate R&D in high-tech sectors and, to some extent, in medium-tech sectors. By contrast, supporting corporate R&D in the low-tech sector turns out to have a minor effect. Instead, encouraging investment in fixed assets appears vital for the productivity of low-tech industries. However, with regard to firms' technical efficiency, R&D matters for all industries (unlike capital intensity). Hence, the allocation of support for corporate R&D seems to be as important as its overall increase and an 'erga omnes' approach across all sectors appears inappropriate.
Subjects: 
Corporate R&D
productivity
technical efficiency
stochastic frontier analysis
JEL: 
L2
O3
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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