The National Science Foundation R&D Survey is an annual survey of firms' research and development expenditures. The survey covers 3000 firms reporting positive R&D. This paper provides a description of the R&D data available at the Center for Economic Studies (CES). The most basic data series available contains the original survey R&D data. It covers the years 1972-92. The remaining two series, although derived from the original files, specialize in particular items. The Mandatory Series contains required survey items for the years 1973-88. Items reported at firms' discretion are in the Voluntary Series, which covers the years 1974-89. Both of the derived series incorporate flags that track quality of the data. Both also include corrections to the data based on original hard copy survey evidence stored at CES. In addition to describing each dataset, we offer suggestions to researchers wishing to use the R&D data in exploring various economic issues. We report selected response rates, discuss the survey design, and provide hints on how to use the data.
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The Role of Industry Classification in the Estimation of Research and Development Expenditures
November 2014
Working Paper Number:
CES-14-45
This paper uses data from the National Science Foundation's surveys on business research and development (R&D) expenditures that have been linked with data from the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Business Database to produce consistent NAICS-based R&D time-series data based on the main product produced by the firm for 1976 to 2008.The results show that R&D spending has shifted away from domestic manufacturing industries in recent years. This is due in part to a shift in U.S. payrolls away from manufacturing establishments for R&D-performing firms.These findings support the notion of an increasingly fragmented production system for R&D-intensive manufacturing firms, whereby U.S. firms control output and provide intellectual property inputs in the form of R&D, but production takes place outside of the firms' U.S. establishments.
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Characteristics of the Top R&D Performing Firms in the U.S.: Evidence from the Survey of Industrial R&D
September 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-33
Innovation drives economic growth and productivity growth, and as such, indicators of innovative activity such as research and development (R&D) expenditures are of paramount importance. We combine Census confidential microdata from two sources in order to examine the characteristics of the top R&D performing firms in the U.S. economy. We use the Survey of Industrial Research and Development (SIRD) to identify the top 200 R&D performing firms in 2003 and, to the extent possible, to trace the evolution of these firms from 1957 to 2007. The Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) further extends our knowledge about these firms and enables us to make comparisons to the U.S. economy. By linking the SIRD and the LBD we are able to create a detailed portrait of the evolution of the top R&D performing firms in the U.S.
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Allocation of Company Research and Development Expenditures to Industries Using a Tobit Model
November 2015
Working Paper Number:
CES-15-42
This paper uses Census microdata and a regression-based approach to assign multi-division firms' pre-2008 Research and Development (R&D) expenditures to more than one industry. Since multi-division firms conduct R&D in more than one industry, assigning R&D to corresponding industries provides a more accurate representation of where R&D actually takes place and provides a consistent time-series with the National Science Foundation R&D by line of business information. Firm R&D is allocated to industries on the basis of observed industry payroll, as befits the historic importance of payroll in Census assignments of firms to industry. The results demonstrate that the method of assigning R&D to industries on the basis of payroll works well in earlier years, but becomes less effective over time as firms outsource their manufacturing function.
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Evaluation And Use Of The Pollution Abatement Costs And Expenditures Survey Micro Data
January 1996
Working Paper Number:
CES-96-01
The Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures Survey (PACE) is an annual survey of manufacturing establishment=s operating costs and capital investment expenditures for pollution abatement purposes. This paper provides a description and evaluation of the PACE micro data available at the Center for Economic Studies (CES). The paper provides an overview of the survey, how the sample is drawn, how the survey questionnaire has changed over time, an assessment of the data quality, and suggestions for the use of the data, as well as its limitations. Also included are suggestions for modifying the survey design and data processing procedures. The PACE data series, linked to the economic data in CES= Longitudinal Research Database (LRD), covers the years 1979-1993, excluding 1983 and 1987.
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The Census of Construction Industries Database
August 1998
Working Paper Number:
CES-98-10
The Census of Construction Industries (CCI) is conducted every five years as part of the quinquennial Economic Census. The Census of Construction Industries covers all establishments with payroll that are engaged primarily in contract construction or construction on their own account for sale as defined in the Standard Industrial Classification Manual. As previously administered, the CCI is a partial census including all multi-establishments and all establishments with payroll above $480,000, one out of every five establishments with payroll between $480,000 and $120,000 and one out of eight remaining establishments. The resulting database contains for each year approximately 200,000 establishments in the building construction, heavy construction and special trade construction industrial classifications. This paper compares the content, survey procedures, and sample response of the 1982, 1987 and 1992 Censuses of Construction.
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A Portrait of Firms that Invest in R&D
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-41
We focus on the evolution and behavior of firms that invest in research and development (R&D). We build upon the cross-sectional analysis in Foster and Grim (2010) that identified the characteristics of top R&D spending firms and follow up by charting the behavior of these firms over time. Our focus is dynamic in nature as we merge micro-level cross-sectional data from the Survey of Industrial Research and Development (SIRD) and the Business Research & Development and Innovation Survey (BRDIS) with the Longitudinal Business Database (LBD). The result is a panel firm-level data set from 1992 to 2011 that tracks firms' performances as they enter and exit the R&D surveys. Using R&D expenditures to proxy R&D performance, we find the top R&D performing firms in the U.S. across all years to be large, old, multinational enterprises. However, we also find that the composition of R&D performing firms is gradually shifting more towards smaller domestic firms with expenditures being less sensitive to scale effects. We find a high degree of persistence for these firms over time. We chart the history of R&D performing firms and compare them to all firms in the economy and find substantial differences in terms of age, size, firm structure and international activity; these differences persist when looking at future firm outcomes.
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The Span of the Effect of R&D in the Firm and Industry
May 1994
Working Paper Number:
CES-94-07
Previous studies have found that the firm's own research and spillovers of research by related firms increase firm productivity. In contrast, in this paper we explore the impact of firm R&D on the productivity of its individual plants. We carry out this investigation of within firm R&D effects using a unique set of Census data. The data, which are from the chemicals industry, are a match of plant level productivity and other characteristics with firm level data on R&D of the parent company, cross-classified by location and applied product field. We explore three aspects of the span of effect of the firm's R&D: (i), the degree to which its R&D is "public" across plants; (ii), the extent of its localization in geographic space, and (iii), the breadth of its relevance outside the applied product area in which it is classified. We find that (i), firm R&D acts more like a private input which is strongly amortized by the number of plants in the firm; (ii), firm R&D is geographically localized, and exerts greater influence on productivity when it is conducted nearer to the plant; and (iii), firm R&D in a given applied product area is of limited relevance to plants producing outside that product area. Moreover, we find that while geographic localization remains significant, it diminishes over time. This trend is consistent with the effect of improved telecommunications on increased information flows within organizations. Finally, we consider spillovers of R&D from the rest of industry, finding that the marginal product of industry R&D on plant productivity, though positive and significant, is far smaller than the marginal product of parent firm's R&D.
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R&D or R vs. D?
Firm Innovation Strategy and Equity Ownership
April 2020
Working Paper Number:
CES-20-14
We analyze a unique dataset that separately reports research and development expenditures
for a large panel of public and private firms. Definitions of 'research' and 'development' in this dataset, respectively, correspond to definitions of knowledge 'exploration' and 'exploitation' in the innovation theory literature. We can thus test theories of how equity ownership status relates to innovation strategy. We find that public firms have greater research intensity than private firms, inconsistent with theories asserting private ownership is more conducive to exploration. We also find public firms invest more intensely in innovation of all sorts. These results suggest relaxed financing constraints enjoyed by public firms, as well as their diversified shareholder bases, make them more conducive to investing in all types of innovation. Reconciling several seemingly conflicting results in prior research, we find private-equity-owned firms, though not less innovative overall than other private firms, skew their innovation strategies toward development and away from research.
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R&D, Attrition and Multiple Imputation in BRDIS
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-13
Multiple imputation in business establishment surveys like BRDIS, an annual business survey in which some companies are sampled every year or multiple years, may enhance the estimates of total R&D in addition to helping researchers estimate models with subpopulations of small sample size. Considering a panel of BRDIS companies throughout the years 2008 to 2013 linked to LBD data, this paper uses the conclusions obtained with missing data visualization and other explorations to come up with a strategy to conduct multiple imputation appropriate to address the item nonresponse in R&D expenditures. Because survey design characteristics are behind much of the item and unit nonresponse, multiple imputation of missing data in BRDIS changes the estimates of total R&D significantly and alters the conclusions reached by models of the determinants of R&D investment obtained with complete case analysis.
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Science, R&D, And Invention Potential Recharge: U.S. Evidence
January 1993
Working Paper Number:
CES-93-02
The influence of academic science on industrial R&D seems to have increased in recent years compared with the pre-World War II period. This paper outlines an approach to tracing this influence using a panel of 14 R&D performing industries from 1961-1986. The results indicate an elasticity between real R&D and indicators of stocks of academic science of about 0.6. This elasticity is significant controlling for industry effects. However, the elasticity declines from its level during the 1961-1973 subperiod, when it was 2.2, to 0.5 during the 1974-1986 subperiod. Reasons for the decline include exogenous and endogenous exhaustion of invention potential, and declining incentives to do R&D stemming from a weakening of intellectual property rights. The growth of R&D since the mid-1980s suggests a restoration of R&D incentives in still more recent times.
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