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Household Innovation, R&D, and New Measures of Intangible Capital

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  • Daniel Sichel
  • Eric von Hippel

Abstract

Household R&D (or household innovation) is an important source of innovation that has to date been largely overlooked in research related to national accounts. Indeed, it is not currently counted as investment in the literatures on household production and human capital. This paper develops time series estimates of nominal investment, real investment, and real capital stocks for household R&D for product innovations in the United States. (We focus on product innovations because survey data on services innovations in the household sector are not yet available.) In the U.S., we find that household product R&D is significant. Our estimate of real investment in 2017 is $41 billion (2012 dollars). This is about half of what producers spend in R&D to develop new products for consumers – a sizable fraction. Our estimate of the real capital stock of household product R&D in 2017 is $233 billion. We conclude that household R&D is an important feature of household activity and, more generally, of the overall landscape of innovation.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Sichel & Eric von Hippel, 2019. "Household Innovation, R&D, and New Measures of Intangible Capital," NBER Working Papers 25599, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25599
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    Cited by:

    1. Charles Hulten & Leonard I. Nakamura, 2020. "Expanded GDP for Welfare Measurement in the 21st Century," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring and Accounting for Innovation in the Twenty-First Century, pages 19-59, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Carol Corrado & Jonathan Haskel & Javier Miranda & Daniel Sichel, 2020. "Introduction to "Measuring and Accounting for Innovation in the Twenty-First Century"," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring and Accounting for Innovation in the Twenty-First Century, pages 1-15, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Yipeng Zhang, 2023. "The Sustainability of Regional Innovation in China: Insights from Regional Innovation Values and Their Spatial Distribution," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-42, June.
    4. Beltagui, Ahmad & Sesis, Achilleas & Stylos, Nikolaos, 2021. "A bricolage perspective on democratising innovation: The case of 3D printing in makerspaces," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    5. Chinloy, Peter & Jiang, Cheng & John, Kose, 2020. "Investment, depreciation and obsolescence of R&D," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    6. Kristof Van Criekingen & Carter Bloch & Carita Eklund, 2022. "Measuring intangible assets—A review of the state of the art," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(5), pages 1539-1558, December.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • O3 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital

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