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Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'innovation'

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Longitudinal Business Database - 50

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Patent and Trademark Office - 28

Federal Statistical Research Data Center - 27

Standard Industrial Classification - 27

Ordinary Least Squares - 26

Annual Survey of Manufactures - 23

National Bureau of Economic Research - 22

Total Factor Productivity - 20

Business Research and Development and Innovation Survey - 19

Bureau of Labor Statistics - 19

Longitudinal Research Database - 19

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Survey of Industrial Research and Development - 18

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Census of Manufacturing Firms - 16

Economic Census - 16

Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics - 14

National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics - 13

Business Dynamics Statistics - 13

Federal Reserve Bank - 12

Business R&D and Innovation Survey - 12

Census of Manufactures - 12

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development - 12

Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research - 11

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patent - 46

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patenting - 36

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innovate - 32

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invention - 26

inventory - 24

technology - 23

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enterprise - 23

econometric - 22

expenditure - 21

market - 19

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entrepreneurship - 18

innovator - 18

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innovating - 17

economist - 16

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sale - 15

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organizational - 13

spillover - 12

patented - 12

produce - 12

firms patents - 11

acquisition - 11

developed - 11

study - 11

venture - 10

revenue - 10

innovation productivity - 10

estimating - 10

product - 10

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demand - 10

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invest - 9

patents firms - 9

firm innovation - 9

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gdp - 9

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industry productivity - 9

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macroeconomic - 8

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recession - 8

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tech - 8

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firm patenting - 7

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merger - 7

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Viewing papers 1 through 10 of 102


  • Working Paper

    Property Rights, Firm Size and Investments in Innovation: Evidence from the America Invents Act

    May 2025

    Authors: James Driver

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-25-31

    I analyze whether a change in patent systems differentially affects firm-level innovation investments at patent-valuing firms of different sizes. Using legally required, economically representative, U.S. Census Bureau microdata, I separate firms into groups based on a firm's response to a question asking it to rank the degree of patent importance to its business and firm-size. I then measure how firms' innovation inputs/outputs respond to the America Invents Act (AIA). Results show the AIA reduced innovation investments at smaller, patent-valuing firms while increasing innovation investments at larger, patent-valuing firms, highlighting differential firm-size effects of patent policy and policy's importance to investments.
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  • Working Paper

    The Rising Returns to R&D: Ideas Are Not Getting Harder to Find

    May 2025

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-25-29

    R&D investment has grown robustly, yet aggregate productivity growth has stagnated. Is this because 'ideas are getting harder to find'? This paper uses micro-data from the US Census Bureau to explore the relationship between R&D and productivity in the manufacturing sector from 1976 to 2018. We find that both the elasticity of output (TFP) with respect to R&D and the marginal returns to R&D have risen sharply. Exploring factors affecting returns, we conclude that R&D obsolescence rates must have risen. Using a novel estimation approach, we find consistent evidence of sharply rising technological rivalry. These findings suggest that R&D has become more effective at finding productivity-enhancing ideas but these ideas may also render rivals' technologies obsolete, making innovations more transient.
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  • Working Paper

    The Rise of Industrial AI in America: Microfoundations of the Productivity J-curve(s)

    April 2025

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-25-27

    We examine the prevalence and productivity dynamics of artificial intelligence (AI) in American manufacturing. Working with the Census Bureau to collect detailed large-scale data for 2017 and 2021, we focus on AI-related technologies with industrial applications. We find causal evidence of J-curve-shaped returns, where short-term performance losses precede longer-term gains. Consistent with costly adjustment taking place within core production processes, industrial AI use increases work-in-progress inventory, investment in industrial robots, and labor shedding, while harming productivity and profitability in the short run. These losses are unevenly distributed, concentrating among older businesses while being mitigated by growth-oriented business strategies and within-firm spillovers. Dynamics, however, matter: earlier (pre-2017) adopters exhibit stronger growth over time, conditional on survival. Notably, among older establishments, abandonment of structured production-management practices accounts for roughly one-third of these losses, revealing a specific channel through which intangible factors shape AI's impact. Taken together, these results provide novel evidence on the microfoundations of technology J-curves, identifying mechanisms and illuminating how and why they differ across firm types. These findings extend our understanding of modern General Purpose Technologies, explaining why their economic impact'exemplified here by AI'may initially disappoint, particularly in contexts dominated by older, established firms.
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  • Working Paper

    Growth is Getting Harder to Find, Not Ideas

    April 2025

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-25-21

    Relatively flat US output growth versus rising numbers of US researchers is often interpreted as evidence that "ideas are getting harder to find." We build a new 46-year panel tracking the universe of U.S. firms' patenting to investigate the micro underpinnings of this claim, separately examining the relationships between research inputs and ideas (patents) versus ideas and growth. Over our sample period, we find that researchers' patenting productivity is increasing, there is little evidence of any secular decline in high-quality patenting common to all firms, and the link between patents and growth is present, differs by type of idea, and is fairly stable. On the other hand, we find strong evidence of secular decreases in output unrelated to patenting, suggesting an important role for other factors. Together, these results invite renewed empirical and theoretical attention to the impact of ideas on growth. To that end, our patent-firm bridge, which will be available to researchers with approved access, is used to produce new, public-use statistics on the Business Dynamics of Patenting Firms (BDS-PF).
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  • Working Paper

    The Intangible Divide: Why Do So Few Firms Invest in Innovation?

    February 2025

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-25-15

    Investments in software, R&D, and advertising have surged, nearing half of U.S. private nonresidential investment. Yet just a few hundred firms dominate this growth. Most firms, including large ones, regularly invest little in capitalized software and R&D, widening this 'intangible divide' despite falling intangible prices. Using comprehensive US Census microdata, we document these patterns and explore factors associated with intangible investment. We find that firms invest significantly less in innovation-related intangibles when their rivals invest more. One firm's investment can obsolesce rivals' investments, reducing returns. This negative pecuniary externality worsens the intangible divide, potentially leading to significant misallocation.
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  • Working Paper

    Investigating the Effect of Innovation Activities of Firms on Innovation Performance: Does Firm Size Matter?

    January 2025

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-25-04

    Understanding the relationship between a firm's innovation activities and its performance has been of great interest to management scholars. While the literature on innovation activities is vast, there is a dearth of studies investigating the effect of key innovation activities of the firm on innovation outcomes in a single study, and whether their effects are dependent on the nature of firms, specifically firm size. Drawing from a longitudinal dataset from the Business Research & Development and Innovation Survey (BRDIS), and informed by contingency theory and resource orchestration theory, we examine the relationship between a firm's innovation activities - including its Research & Development (R&D) investment, securing patents, collaborative R&D, R&D toward new business areas, and grants for R&D - and its product innovation and process innovation. We also investigate whether these relationships are contingent on firm size. Consistent with contingency theory, we find a significant difference between large firms and small firms regarding how they enhance product innovation and process innovation. Large firms can improve product innovation by securing patents through applications and issuances, coupled with active participation in collaborative R&D efforts. Conversely, smaller firms concentrate their efforts on the number of patents applied for, directing R&D efforts toward new business areas, and often leveraging grants for R&D efforts. To achieve process innovation, a similar dichotomy emerges. Larger firms demonstrate a commitment to securing patents, engage in R&D efforts tailored to new business areas, and actively collaborate with external entities on R&D efforts. In contrast, smaller firms primarily focus on securing patents and channel their R&D efforts toward new business pursuits. This nuanced exploration highlights the varied strategies employed by large and small firms in navigating the intricate landscape of both product and process innovation. The results shed light on specific innovation activities as antecedents of innovation outcomes and demonstrate how the effectiveness of such assets is contingent upon firm size.
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  • Working Paper

    Industry Shakeouts after an Innovation Breakthrough

    November 2024

    Authors: Xiaoyang Li

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-24-70

    Conventional wisdom suggests that after a technological breakthrough, the number of active firms first surges, and then sharply declines, in what is known as a 'shakeout'. This paper challenges that notion with new empirical evidence from across the U.S. economy, revealing that shakeouts are the exception, not the rule. I develop a statistical strategy to detect breakthroughs by isolating sustained anomalies in net firm entry rates, offering a robust alternative to narrative-driven approaches that can be applied to all industries. The results of this strategy, which reliably align with well-documented breakthroughs and remain consistent across various validation tests, uncover a novel trend: the number of entry-driven breakthroughs has been declining over time. The variability and frequent absence of shakeouts across breakthrough industries are consistent with breakthroughs primarily occurring in industries with low returns to scale and with modest learning curves, shifting the narrative on the nature of innovation over the past forty years in the U.S.
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  • Working Paper

    The Role of R&D Factors in Economic Growth

    November 2024

    Authors: Lorenz Ekerdt

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-24-69

    This paper studies factor usage in the R&D sector. I show that the usage of non-labor inputs in R&D is significant, and that their usage has grown much more rapidly than the R&D workforce. Using a standard growth decomposition applied to the aggregate idea production function, I estimate that at least 77% of idea growth since the early 1960s can be attributed to the growth of non-labor inputs in R&D. I demonstrate that a similar pattern would hold on the balanced growth path of a standard semi-endogenous growth model, and thus that the decomposition is not simply a by-product of rising research intensity. I then show that combining long-running differences in factor growth rates with non-unitary elasticities of substitution in idea production leads to a slowdown in idea growth whenever labor and capital are complementary. I conclude by estimating this elasticity of substitution and demonstrate that the results favor complimentarities.
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  • Working Paper

    Multinational Production and Innovation in Tandem

    October 2024

    Authors: Jin Liu

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-24-64

    Multinational firms colocate production and innovation by offshoring them to the same host country or region. In this paper, I examine the determinants of multinational firms' production and innovation locations. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variations in tariffs, I find complementarities between production and innovation within host countries and regions. To evaluate manufacturing reshoring policies, I develop a quantitative multicountry offshoring location choice model. I allow for rich colocation benefits and cross-country interdependencies and prove supermodularity of the model to solve this otherwise NP-hard problem. I find the effects of manufacturing reshoring policies are nonlinear, contingent upon firm heterogeneity, and they accumulate dynamically.
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  • Working Paper

    Entry Costs Rise with Growth

    October 2024

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-24-63

    Over time and across states in the U.S., the number of firms is more closely tied to overall employment than to output per worker. In many models of firm dynamics, trade, and growth with a free entry condition, these facts imply that the costs of creating a new firm increase sharply with productivity growth. This increase in entry costs can stem from the rising cost of labor used in entry and weak or negative knowledge spillovers from prior entry. Our findings suggest that productivity-enhancing policies will not induce firm entry, thereby limiting the total impact of such policies on welfare.
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