Scientific knowledge is believed to be the wellspring of innovation. Historically, firms have also invested in research to fuel innovation and growth. In this paper, we document a shift away from scientific research by large corporations between 1980 and 2007. We find that publications by...

In this paper we estimate a model of production and investment based on the theory of dynamic duality and are particularly Interested in the effects of R&D spillovers and in calculating the social and private rates of return. We identify and estimate three effects associated with the...

Research and Development (Ramp;D) endogenous growth models predict and most evidence show that investment in Ramp;D increase with economic development. We consider the type of human capital mainly used in research labs and show that the richest countries are investing proportionally less than...

This paper investigates how different dimensions of social capital and institutional quality are related to innovation activity and its utilisation. For reasons of data availability, previous studies have included mainly patenting data. This study complements the previous studies by analysing...

In many growth models, economic growth arises from people creating ideas, and the long-run growth rate is the product of two terms: the effective number of researchers and their research productivity. We present a wide range of evidence from various industries, products, and firms showing that...

Research productivity depends on the ability to discern whether an idea is promising, and a willingness to abandon the ones that are not. Economists know little about this process, however, because empirical studies of innovation typically begin with a sample of issued patents or published...

A recent explanation for declining GDP growth is that R&D has gotten harder. The formal explanation in Jones (1995) is “fishing out”-- idea discovery decreases in the level of knowledge. If valid, long-run growth is exogenous. In follow-on empirical work, Bloom, Jones, Van Reenen and Webb...