Growth Is Getting Harder to Find, Not Ideas

Relatively flat US productivity growth versus rising R&D expenditures is often interpreted as evidence that ideas are getting harder to find. We build a new 45-year panel tracking the universe of US firms' patenting to investigate the micro underpinnings of this conclusion, separately examining the relationships between research inputs and ideas (patents) versus ideas and growth. We find that average patents per R&D input are increasing, the elasticity of patents to R&D inputs is flat or rising, and there is not systematic evidence of a secular decline in patenting after controlling for research inputs. We then document a positive, significant, and fairly steady relationship between firms' patent and labor productivity growth rates. Average firm growth after controlling for patent growth, however, declines. Together, these results suggest that firms' innovative efforts play a key role in sustaining growth that has not diminished over the last four decades.