R&D Determinants: accounting for the differences between research and development

The determinants of R&D are an important topic of industrial economics. The classical Schumpeterian hypotheses about the influence of size and market power have been complemented with the role played by industry determinants, such as demand pull, technological opportunity and appropriability, in determining R&D investments. However, R&D has always been considered as a whole, even though research and development are different activities with different purposes, knowledge bases, people involved and management styles. We take advantage of a new panel database of innovative Spanish firms (PITEC) to distinguish between research and development efforts of firms. We analyze the role jointly played by traditional R&D determinants in driving research and development, accounting for the differences between both activities. Results show that demand pull and appropriability have a higher effect on development, while technological opportunity is more influential for research. Differences are statistically significant, important in magnitude, and robust to the use of different indicators for demand pull, technological opportunity and appropriability and to several robustness checks.