Buyers, Suppliers, and R&D Spillovers

The role of buyers and suppliers has received little attention in the literature on research and development (R&D) spillovers and productivity, which has focused primarily on the moderating roles of technological and geographic proximity. In this study, we examine R&D spillovers that result from buyer and supplier relationships at the transaction level, utilizing a unique dataset identifying individual buyers and suppliers of Japanese manufacturing firms, matched with data from R&D surveys and the Census of Manufactures. In an analysis of more than 20,000 Japanese manufacturing plants, we find that R&D stocks of buyers and suppliers provide a substantial productivity performance premium over and above the effect of technologically and geographically proximate R&D stocks. These effects are magnified if the supplier and buyer have business group ties based on capital ownership relationships. While the effects of technologically proximate R&D decay with distance, this is not the case for spillovers from buyers and suppliers. Our results identify transaction-based spillovers as a key influence on productivity and social returns to R&D.