IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/japmet/v34y2019i2p315-324.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The cyclicality of R&D investment revisited

Author

Listed:
  • Hans van Ophem
  • Noud van Giersbergen
  • Kees Jan van Garderen
  • Maurice Bun

Abstract

In Fabrizio and Tsolmon (Review of Economics and Statistics, 2014, 96(4), 662–675) and Barlevy (American Economic Review, 2007, 97(4), 1131–1164) it was concluded that R&D investments are procyclical. Fabrizio and Tsolmon utilized a model based on Barlevy, but it differed in some respects and allowed for more heterogeneity. However, we doubt whether their implied trends are intended. Fabrizio and Tsolmon also set missing values for R&D equal to zero, leading to unrealistic jumps in investment and its first differences. We reconcile and replicate both the Fabrizio and Tsolmon and Barlevy papers by considering extensions that encompass both models. Furthermore, we treat missing values more appropriately and consider some alternative specifications to check the robustness of the results. Procyclicality is confirmed, but we find much less heterogeneity than Fabrizio and Tsolmon did. In particular, obsolescence and patent effectiveness are no longer important but external financing is.

Suggested Citation

  • Hans van Ophem & Noud van Giersbergen & Kees Jan van Garderen & Maurice Bun, 2019. "The cyclicality of R&D investment revisited," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(2), pages 315-324, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:japmet:v:34:y:2019:i:2:p:315-324
    DOI: 10.1002/jae.2667
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/jae.2667
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/jae.2667?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:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Philippe Aghion & Philippe Askenazy & Nicolas Berman & Gilbert Cette & Laurent Eymard, 2012. "Credit Constraints And The Cyclicality Of R&D Investment: Evidence From France," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(5), pages 1001-1024, October.
    2. repec:fth:harver:1473 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Patrick Francois & Huw Lloyd-Ellis, 2003. "Animal Spirits Through Creative Destruction," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 530-550, June.
    4. Walde, Klaus & Woitek, Ulrich, 2004. "R&D expenditure in G7 countries and the implications for endogenous fluctuations and growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 91-97, January.
    5. Reinhard Schunck, 2013. "Within and between estimates in random-effects models: Advantages and drawbacks of correlated random effects and hybrid models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 13(1), pages 65-76, March.
    6. Diego Comin & Mark Gertler, 2006. "Medium-Term Business Cycles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 523-551, June.
    7. Zvi Griliches, 1998. "Patent Statistics as Economic Indicators: A Survey," NBER Chapters, in: R&D and Productivity: The Econometric Evidence, pages 287-343, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Matthew Rafferty & Mark Funk, 2004. "Demand shocks and firm-financed R&D expenditures," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(14), pages 1529-1536.
    9. Gadi Barlevy, 2007. "On the Cyclicality of Research and Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1131-1164, September.
    10. Himmelberg, Charles P & Petersen, Bruce C, 1994. "R&D and Internal Finance: A Panel Study of Small Firms in High-Tech Industries," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 76(1), pages 38-51, February.
    11. Sylvie Goetgeluk & Stijn Vansteelandt, 2008. "Conditional Generalized Estimating Equations for the Analysis of Clustered and Longitudinal Data," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 64(3), pages 772-780, September.
    12. Aghion, P. & Askenazy, P. & Berman, N. & Cette, G. & Eymard, L., 2008. "Credit Constraints and the Cyclicality of R&D Investment: Evidence from France," Working papers 198, Banque de France.
    13. Mundlak, Yair, 1978. "On the Pooling of Time Series and Cross Section Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(1), pages 69-85, January.
    14. Philippe Aghion & George-Marios Angeletos & Abhijit Banerjee & Kalina Manova, 2005. "Volatility and Growth: Credit Constraints and Productivity-Enhancing Investment," NBER Working Papers 11349, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Geroski, P A & Walters, C F, 1995. "Innovative Activity over the Business Cycle," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 105(431), pages 916-928, July.
    16. Min Ouyang, 2011. "On the Cyclicality of R&D," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(2), pages 542-553, May.
    17. Kira R. Fabrizio & Ulya Tsolmon, 2014. "An Empirical Examination of the Procyclicality of R&D Investment and Innovation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 96(4), pages 662-675, October.
    18. Patrick Francois & Huw Lloyd-Ellis, 2009. "Schumpeterian Business Cycles with Pro-Cyclical R&D," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(4), pages 567-591, October.
    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. Cefis, Elena & Coad, Alex & Lucini-Paioni, Alessandro, 2023. "Landmarks as lighthouses: firms' innovation and modes of exit during the business cycle," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(8).
    2. Ahmad, Manzoor, 2021. "Non-linear dynamics of innovation activities over the business cycles: Empirical evidence from OECD economies," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    3. Díaz, Guillermo Arenas & Barge-Gil, Andrés & Heijs, Joost, 2020. "The effect of innovation on skilled and unskilled workers during bad times," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 141-158.

    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. Ahmad, Manzoor, 2021. "Non-linear dynamics of innovation activities over the business cycles: Empirical evidence from OECD economies," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    2. Pellens, Maikel & Peters, Bettina & Hud, Martin & Rammer, Christian & Licht, Georg, 2018. "Public investment in R&D in reaction to economic crises: A longitudinal study for OECD countries," ZEW Discussion Papers 18-005, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    3. Christian Rammer, 2011. "Auswirkungen der Wirtschaftskrise auf die Innovationstätigkeit der Unternehmen in Deutschland," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 80(3), pages 13-34.
    4. Miroslav Gabrovski, 2020. "Simultaneous Innovation and the Cyclicality of R&D," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 36, pages 122-133, April.
    5. Makridis, Christos A. & McGuire, Erin, 2023. "The quality of innovation “Booms” during “Busts”," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(1).
    6. Silvestri, Daniela & Riccaboni, Massimo & Della Malva, Antonio, 2018. "Sailing in all winds: Technological search over the business cycle," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(10), pages 1933-1944.
    7. Hud, Martin & Rammer, Christian, 2014. "FuE- und Innovationsausgaben während der Krise: Strategien zur Sicherung des Innovationserfolgs," ZEW Dokumentationen 14-03, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    8. Bernhard Dachs & Martin Hud & Christian Köhler & Bettina Peters, 2016. "Employment Effects of Innovations over the Business Cycle: Firm-Level Evidence from European Countries," DEM Discussion Paper Series 16-20, Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg.
    9. Schmitz, Tom, 2021. "Endogenous growth, firm heterogeneity and the long-run impact of financial crises," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    10. Norman H. Sedgley & John D. Burger & Kerry M. Tan, 2019. "The symmetry and cyclicality of R&D spending in advanced economies," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 57(5), pages 1811-1828, November.
    11. Álvarez-Ayuso, Inmaculada C. & Kao, Chihwa & Romero-Jordán, Desiderio, 2018. "Long run effect of public grants and tax credits on R&D investment: A non-stationary panel data approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 93-104.
    12. Aysun, Uluc, 2020. "Volatility costs of R&D," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    13. Hud, Martin & Rammer, Christian, 2015. "Innovation budgeting over the business cycle and innovation performance," ZEW Discussion Papers 15-030, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    14. García-Vega, María & Gupta, Apoorva & Kneller, Richard, 2023. "Is acquisition-FDI during an economic crisis detrimental for domestic innovation?," DICE Discussion Papers 403, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    15. Andreas Reinstaller, 2019. "Produkteinführungen österreichischer Unternehmen und Konjunkturschwankungen," WIFO Monatsberichte (monthly reports), WIFO, vol. 92(3), pages 173-182, March.
    16. Hud, Martin & Hussinger, Katrin, 2015. "The impact of R&D subsidies during the crisis," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(10), pages 1844-1855.
    17. Uluc Aysun & Zeynep Yom, 2019. "R&D, innovation spillover and business cycles," Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics Working Paper Series 43, Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics.
    18. Shinagawa, Shunsuke, 2013. "Endogenous fluctuations with procyclical R&D," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 274-280.
    19. Pellens, Maikel & Peters, Bettina & Hud, Martin & Rammer, Christian & Licht, Georg, 2024. "Public R&D investment in economic crises," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(10).
    20. Min Ouyang, 2010. "Cyclical Persistence and the Cyclicality of R&D," Working Papers 101104, University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics, revised Mar 2011.

    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:wly:japmet:v:34:y:2019:i:2:p:315-324. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/0883-7252/ .

    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.