Recent empirical work finds that R&D expenditures are quite procyclical, even for firms that are not redit-constrained during downturns. This has been taken as strong evidence against Schumpeterian-style theories of business cycles that emphasize the idea that downturns in production may be good times to allocate labor towards innovative activities. Here we argue that the procyclicality of R&D investment is, in fact, quite consistent with at least one of these theories. In our analysis, we emphasize three key features of R&D investment relative to other types of innovative activity: (1) it uses knowledge intensively, (2) it is a long-term investment with uncertain applications and (3) it suffers from diminishing returns over time.
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Paper provided by Queen's University, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
1102.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Klaus Wälde, 2005.
"Endogenous Growth Cycles,"
International Economic Review,
Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 46(3), pages 867-894, 08.
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