A Schumpeterian Growth Model with Heterogenous Firms
Abstract
A common assumption in the Schumpeterian growth literature is that the innovation size is constant and identical across industries. This is in contrast with the empirical evidence which shows that: (i) the innovation size is far from being identical across industries; and (ii) the size distribution of profit returns from innovation is highly skewed toward the low value side, with a long tail on the high value side. In the present paper, we develop a Schumpeterian growth model that is consistent with this evidence. In particular, we assume that when a firm innovates, the size of its quality improvement is the result of a random draw from a Pareto distribution. This enables us to extend the class of quality-ladder growth models to encompass firm heterogeneity. We study the policy implications of this new set-up numerically and find that it is optimal to heavily subsidize R&D for plausible parameter values. Although it is optimal to tax R&D for some parameter values, this case only occurs when the steady-state rate of economic growth is very low.Download Info
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Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number 13674.Length:
Date of creation: 2008
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:13674
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Keywords: Schumpeterian Growth; R&D; optimal policy;Other versions of this item:
- A. Minniti & C.P. Parello & P.S. Segerstrom, 2008. "A Schumpeterian Growth Model with Heterogenous Firms," Working Papers 645, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
- L16 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Industrial Organization and Macroeconomics; Macroeconomic Industrial Structure
- O38 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change; Research and Development; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Government Policy
- O31 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change; Research and Development; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
- E10 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - General
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
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