IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/2720.html

IR&D Project Data and Theories of R&D Investment

Author

Listed:
  • Frank R. Lichtenberg

Abstract

This paper analyzes data on a large sample of research and development (R&D) projects documented in the Defense Department's Independent R&O Data Bank, both to provide some stylized facts about R&O investment at the project level and to test the implications of a control-theoretical model developed by Grossman and Shapiro. We calculate moments of the marginal distributions and elasticities of cost with respect to time, by type of project (e.g. basic research, development), and discriminate between alternative hypothesis concerning the shape of the hazard function of R&D investment. Consistent with the major implication of the Grossman-Shapiro model, the rate of investment in a project tends to increase as the project approaches completion.

Suggested Citation

  • Frank R. Lichtenberg, 1988. "IR&D Project Data and Theories of R&D Investment," NBER Working Papers 2720, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2720
    Note: PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w2720.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roberts, Kevin & Weitzman, Martin L, 1981. "Funding Criteria for Research, Development, and Exploration Projects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(5), pages 1261-1288, September.
    2. Lichtenberg, Frank R, 1988. "The Private R&D Investment Response to Federal Design and Technical Competitions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(3), pages 550-559, June.
    3. Gene M. Grossman & Carl Shapiro, 1986. "Optimal Dynamic R&D Programs," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(4), pages 581-593, Winter.
    4. Robert E. Lucas, Jr., 1971. "Optimal Management of a Research and Development Project," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(11), pages 679-697, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Bhattacharjya, Ashoke S., 1996. "Composition of R&D and technological cycles," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 20(1-3), pages 445-470.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eymen Errais & Jeffrey Sadowsky, 2005. "Valuing Pilot Project Investments in Incomplete Markets : A Compound Option Approach," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 73, Society for Computational Economics.
    2. Dutta, Prajit K., 1997. "Optimal management of an R&D budget," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 21(2-3), pages 575-602.
    3. Bar-Ilan, Avner & Strange, William C., 1998. "A model of sequential investment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 437-463, March.
    4. A. Messica & A. Mehrez & I. David, 2000. "Optimal Expenditure Patterns of a Double-Path Engineering Project," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 105(2), pages 441-455, May.
    5. repec:ipg:wpaper:2014-362 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Brent Goldfarb & Scott Shane & Marie Thursby, 2008. "Appropriability and Commercialization: Evidence from MIT Inventions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(5), pages 893-906, May.
    7. Toxvaerd, Flavio, 2007. "A theory of optimal deadlines," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 493-513, February.
    8. Kaies Samet, 2010. "The creative intelligence," Working paper serie RMT - Grenoble Ecole de Management hal-00512539, HAL.
    9. Korok Ray, 2007. "Performance Evaluations and Efficient Sorting," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 45(4), pages 839-882, September.
    10. Kaies Samet, 2010. "The creative intelligence," Working Papers hal-00512539, HAL.
    11. Viju, Crina & Kerr, William A., 2013. "Taking an option on the future: Subsidizing biofuels for energy security or reducing global warming," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 543-548.
    12. Vesa Kanniainen, 1993. "Optimal production of innovations under uncertainty," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 147-168, June.
    13. Heijs, Joost, 2003. "Freerider behaviour and the public finance of R&D activities in enterprises: the case of the Spanish low interest credits for R&D," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 445-461, March.
    14. Ali-Yrkkö, Jyrki, 2004. "Impact of Public R&D Financing on Private R&D - Does Financial Constraint Matter?," Discussion Papers 943, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    15. Keller, Godfrey & Novák, Vladimír & Willems, Tim, 2019. "A note on optimal experimentation under risk aversion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 476-487.
    16. Catherine Bobtcheff & Christian Gollier & Richard Zeckhauser, 2008. "Resource allocations when projects have ranges of increasing returns," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 93-93, August.
    17. Yu-Lin Huang & Chai-Chi Pi, 2009. "Valuation of multi-stage BOT projects involving dedicated asset investments: a sequential compound option approach," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(7), pages 653-666.
    18. Clark, Derek J. & Kundu, Tapas & Nilssen, Tore, 2025. "Investment and endogenous efficiency in a contest," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 247(C).
    19. Andrea Bassanini & Stefano Scarpetta, 2003. "The Driving Forces of Economic Growth: Panel Data Evidence for the OECD Countries," OECD Economic Studies, OECD Publishing, vol. 2001(2), pages 9-56.
    20. Kort, Peter M. & Murto, Pauli & Pawlina, Grzegorz, 2010. "Uncertainty and stepwise investment," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 202(1), pages 196-203, April.
    21. Aditya Vedantam & Ananth Iyer, 2021. "Capacity Investment under Bayesian Information Updates at Reporting Periods: Model and Application," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(8), pages 2707-2725, August.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:2720. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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/nberrus.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.