IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/kof/wpskof/16-402.html

Research and Development as an Initiator of Fixed Capital Investment

Author

Abstract

This paper investigates the causal relationship between firms' research and development expenditures (R&D) and their investments into fixed capital. The literature provides two contrasting views in this respect. The first view holds that a firm's research activity causes, via the creation of inventions, subsequent investment into fixed capital, as the firm needs additional capacities to produce the new goods or services that follow from the inventions. The second view holds that firms' fixed capital investments cause intensified research activity, as novel capital goods from external suppliers offer the firms' researchers a wide range of additional technical possibilities of how to build new prototypes. Using panel data of Swiss firms ranging from 1990 to 2014, the paper applies, contrasting the existing empirical literature only based on VARs, a 2SLS approach to uncover the direction of causality between R&D and fixed capital investment. In order to obtain exogenous instruments, the paper exploits shocks to i) technological opportunities and ii) sales from capital goods suppliers. Results show a one-way causal relationship; we find evidence for that firms' R&D expenditures cause fixed capital investments, but we do not find evidence for the reverse effect. When additionally looking at innovation performance, R&D activities turn out to be complementary to fixed capital investment, in the sense that they markedly increase the expected return on investment. Thus, increasing research activity may not just be valuable for long-run economic growth but, via investment, may also give the economy a head start in times of a prolonged economic downturn.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrin Spescha & Martin Woerter, 2016. "Research and Development as an Initiator of Fixed Capital Investment," KOF Working papers 16-402, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    • Handle: RePEc:kof:wpskof:16-402
    DOI: 10.3929/ethz-a-010592083
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3929/ethz-a-010592083
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.3929/ethz-a-010592083?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Silva, Pedro Mendonça & Moutinho, Victor Ferreira & Moreira, António Carrizo, 2022. "Do social and economic factors affect the technical efficiency in entrepreneurship activities? Evidence from European countries using a two-stage DEA model," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 82(PB).
    3. Thomas Bolli & Filippo Pusterla, 2023. "Complementarities among types of education in affecting firms' productivity," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 37(4), pages 554-591, December.
    4. Lin, Boqiang & Wang, Siquan, 2024. "Sustainability of renewable energy in China: Enhanced strategic investment and displaced R&D expenditure," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    5. Fakhimi, MohammadAmin & Miremadi, Iman, 2022. "The impact of technological and social capabilities on innovation performance: a technological catch-up perspective," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kof:wpskof:16-402. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/koethch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.