IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/2745.html

Government Subsidies to Private Military R&D Investment: DOD's IR&D Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Frank R. Lichtenberg

Abstract

A relatively obscure defense procurement policy establishes a large subsidy to private military R&D investment. On the surface, it appears that the marginal subsidy to such investment is zero, but this is only true in the short run. Due to DOD's policy of allowable-cost determination, the long-run subsidy is substantial. It is much larger, in fact, than the subsidy provided by the R&D Tax Credit enacted in 1981. I calculate the subsidy by estimating an econometric model using contractor-level data from the Defense Contract Audit Agency. This subsidy may have an important influence on the amount and character of privately financed innovation in the U.S.

Suggested Citation

  • Frank R. Lichtenberg, 1988. "Government Subsidies to Private Military R&D Investment: DOD's IR&D Policy," NBER Working Papers 2745, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2745
    Note: PR PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w2745.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Reppy, Judith, 1977. "Defense department payments for `company-financed' R&D," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 396-410, October.
    3. William P. Rogerson, 1988. "Profit Regulation of Defense Contractors and Prizes for Innovation : Theory and Evidence," Discussion Papers 759, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    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. Qiang Fu & Jingfeng Lu, 2010. "Contest Design And Optimal Endogenous Entry," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 48(1), pages 80-88, January.
    2. Thomas Karier, 1999. "Closing the R&D Gap," Macroeconomics 9902002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. William P. Rogerson, 1993. "Economic Incentives and the Defense Procurement Process," Discussion Papers 1078, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    4. Juan R. Perilla Jiménez & Thomas H. W. Ziesemer, 2024. "Technology adoption, innovation policy and catching-up," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 1-24, April.

    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. Mowery, David C., 2010. "Military R&D and Innovation," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1219-1256, Elsevier.
    2. Lichtenberg, Frank R., 1989. "How elastic is the government's demand for weapons?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 57-78, October.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. Clark, Derek J. & Kundu, Tapas & Nilssen, Tore, 2025. "Investment and endogenous efficiency in a contest," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 247(C).
    6. 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.
    7. William P. Rogerson, 1994. "Economic Incentives and the Defense Procurement Process," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 65-90, Fall.
    8. Zhao, Shukuan & Xu, Baoda & Zhang, Weiyong, 2018. "Government R&D subsidy policy in China: An empirical examination of effect, priority, and specifics," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 75-82.
    9. Fu, Qiang & Lu, Jingfeng, 2009. "Contest with pre-contest investment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 103(3), pages 142-145, June.
    10. Gianluca Orsatti & François Perruchas & Davide Consoli & Francesco Quatraro, 2020. "Public Procurement, Local Labor Markets and Green Technological Change. Evidence from US Commuting Zones," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 75(4), pages 711-739, April.
    11. Lichtenberg, Frank R. & Siegel, Donald, 1990. "The effects of leveraged buyouts on productivity and related aspects of firm behavior," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 165-194, September.
    12. Frank R. Lichtenberg, 1992. "R&D Investment and International Productivity Differences," NBER Working Papers 4161, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Frank R. Lichtenberg, 1986. "Private Investment in R&D to Signal Ability to Perform Government Contracts," NBER Working Papers 1974, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. David, Paul A. & Hall, Bronwyn H. & Toole, Andrew A., 2000. "Is public R&D a complement or substitute for private R&D? A review of the econometric evidence," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(4-5), pages 497-529, April.
    15. Luca Grilli & Samuele Murtinu, 2011. "Econometric Evaluation of Public Policies for Science and Innovation: A Brief Guide to Practice," Chapters, in: Massimo G. Colombo & Luca Grilli & Lucia Piscitello & Cristina Rossi-Lamastra (ed.), Science and Innovation Policy for the New Knowledge Economy, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    16. Yuhan Zhao & Xuguang Song, 2018. "How Should the Chinese Government Invest R&D Funds: Enterprises or Institutions?," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 52(4), pages 1089-1112, December.
    17. RAITERI Emilio, 2015. "A time to nourish? Evaluating the impact of innovative public procurement on technological generality through patent data," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2015-05, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).
    18. Raiteri, Emilio, 2018. "A time to nourish? Evaluating the impact of public procurement on technological generality through patent data," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(5), pages 936-952.
    19. Yeon-Koo Che & Elisabetta Iossa & Patrick Rey, 2021. "Prizes versus Contracts as Incentives for Innovation [Subgame Perfect Implementation Under Information Perturbations]," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(5), pages 2149-2178.
    20. Gagnepain, Philippe & Aguiar Wicht, Luis, 2013. "European Cooperative R&D and Firm Performance: Evidence Based on Funding Differences in Key Actions," CEPR Discussion Papers 9426, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    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:2745. 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.