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Stagnation despite ongoing innovation: Is R&D expenditure composition a missing link? An empirical analysis for the US (1948-2019)

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  • Giovanna Ciaffi
  • Matteo Deleidi
  • Stefano Di Bucchianico

Abstract

Among the explanations for prolonged economic stagnation in advanced economies we find those that highlight the role of technical progress and its weakening impact on potential growth. Several contributions stress the apparent paradox of technological development and innovation going hand in hand with slowing labour productivity growth. This discourse is in turn linked to numerous factors, among which the pattern of research productivity, that appears to be falling in the last decades. The contribution of this article is to analyse the role of innovation expenditures composition, and its effects on productivity. We study whether productivity stagnation can be (partially) explained by the continuously falling ratio between public and private expenditures in innovation in the USA. We carry out an SVAR analysis of the US case during the period 1948Q1-2019Q4. In the empirical exercise we estimate the effect of public expenditure in innovation on productivity, private R&D, and GDP, comparing the outcomes with those relative to private expenditure in innovation. According to our results, the public type of innovation spending exhibits a positive effect on productivity and GDP, and it has a greater effect than private expenditure in innovation. In addition to this, public expenditure in innovation exerts a strong crowding-in effect on private investment in R&D. Therefore, according to the evidence we find, we maintain that the focus on the prolonged and sustained fall of public expenditure in innovation in relation to private expenditure of the same type helps in explaining lasting stagnation

Suggested Citation

  • Giovanna Ciaffi & Matteo Deleidi & Stefano Di Bucchianico, 2022. "Stagnation despite ongoing innovation: Is R&D expenditure composition a missing link? An empirical analysis for the US (1948-2019)," Department of Economics University of Siena 877, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    • Handle: RePEc:usi:wpaper:877
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    Cited by:

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    2. Dumont, Michel, 2022. "Public support to business research and development in Belgium: fourth evaluation," MPRA Paper 115418, University Library of Munich, Germany.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Secular Stagnation; public and private R&D; innovation policy; research productivity; productivity growth;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
    • O32 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D
    • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General

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