R&D and productivity in Danish firms: some empirical evidence

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to examine the relationship between R&D capital and productivity using microdata for Danish manufacturing firms. The influence of factors such as ownership, innovative characteristics and source of funding accounted for. The return to accumulated R&D capital is estimated to be in the neighbourhood of 9–12%, whereas the short-run effect of R&D is insignificant. Furthermore, the direct influence from foreign ownership, source of funding accounted for, innovative characteristics and ownership dispersion on productivity are analysed. However, none of the factors seem to have an impact on firm productivity. The same is the case for the indirect influence coming from interaction with accumulated R&D capital.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Jesper Overgaard for research assistance and we thank Fred Derrick, who was discussant at the IAES-conference in Montreal, October 1999, Steve Martin, other colleagues from the Centre for Industrial Economics, University of Copenhagen, from The Danish Institute for Studies in Research and Research Policy and participants at the 26th EARIE-conference in Torino, September 1999, for useful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

See also Husso (1997), Wakelin (1998) and Lehtoranta (1998).

Moreover, Scherer (1982) and Griliches (1995) estimate the production function on industry level data.

See the Oslo-manual, OECD (1992).

Griliches (1979).

See Short (1994), Mayer (1996), Berglöf (1996) and Shleifer and Vishny (1998) for recent surveys.