On Firm Growth and Innovation - Some New Empirical Perspectives Using French CIS, 1992-2004

In the paper we wish to examine if the firms that innovate know a higher growth than the firm that do not. We use diverse waves of CIS for the French industries over the period 1992-2004 and carry out different models and new econometric methods (quantile regression). Our main findings are that innovative firms produce more growth than non innovative firms. The estimates show that the results are robust to the different types of models that we have implemented. Process innovators are more productive in terms of growth than product innovators when OLS and Random effects models are used. The reverse is true for Fix effect model and quantile regression. In the three growth equations estimated by GMM the coefficients related to innovation product are always higher. Our study does not give definitive results with respect to the magnitude of the effects of the type of innovation on firm growth