R&D intensity and market valuation of firm: a study of R&D incurring manufacturing firms in India

The present study examines the impact of R&D expenditure on market valuation of firm using Tobin’s q. The study uses firm level data for Indian manufacturing sector obtained from Prowess database of CMIE for the period 2001-2010. The study forms an unbalanced panel with 326 R&D incurring (reporting) firms and employs Pooled-OLS and fixed effects models to analyze the relationship between R&D investment and firm value. After controlling some firm specific variables the present study finds an inverted U-shaped relationship between R&D intensity and firm value indicating the diminishing marginal return to each rupee spent on R&D. This finding is consistent with the findings of Huang and Liu (2005) for Taiwan and Bracker and Krishnan (2011) for US. It indicates that, R&D investment have a positive impact on the market value of firm at the beginning, but, when the investment exceeds an optimal level, these investments lower the firm value.