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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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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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Work Organization and Cumulative Advantage
March 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-18
Over decades of wage stagnation, researchers have argued that reorganizing work can boost pay for disadvantaged workers. But upgrading jobs could inadvertently shift hiring away from those workers, exacerbating their disadvantage. We theorize how work organization affects cumulative advantage in the labor market, or the extent to which high-paying positions are increasingly allocated to already-advantaged workers. Specifically, raising technical skill demands exacerbates cumulative advantage by shifting hiring towards higher-skilled applicants. In contrast, when employers increase autonomy or skills learned on-the-job, they raise wages to buy worker consent or commitment, rather than pre-existing skill. To test this idea, we match administrative earnings to task descriptions from job posts. We compare earnings for workers hired into the same occupation and firm, but under different task allocations. When employers raise complexity and autonomy, new hires' starting earnings increase and grow faster. However, while the earnings boost from complex, technical tasks shifts employment toward workers with higher prior earnings, worker selection changes less for tasks learned on-the-job and very little for high autonomy tasks. These results demonstrate how reorganizing work can interrupt cumulative advantage.
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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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Corporate Share Repurchase Policies and Labor Share
February 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-14
Using census data, we investigate whether share repurchases are responsible for the fall in labor share in U.S. corporations. Recent legislation imposes taxes on share repurchases, motivated by the assertion that share repurchases have led to reduced labor payments. Using several empirical approaches, we find no evidence that increases in share repurchases contribute to decreases in labor share. Top share repurchasing firms since 1982 did not decrease labor share. We also rely on exogenous changes in share repurchases around EPS announcements to pinpoint causality. Policies aimed at improving labor share by discouraging share repurchases will likely not achieve their objectives.
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U.S. Banks' Artificial Intelligence and Small Business Lending: Evidence from the Census Bureau's Annual Business Survey
February 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-07
Utilizing confidential microdata from the Census Bureau's new technology survey (technology module of the Annual Business Survey), we shed light on U.S. banks' use of artificial intelligence (AI) and its effect on their small business lending. We find that the percentage of banks using AI increases from 14% in 2017 to 43% in 2019. Linking banks' AI use to their small business lending, we find that banks with greater AI usage lend significantly more to distant borrowers, about whom they have less soft information. Using an instrumental variable based on banks' proximity to AI vendors, we show that AI's effect is likely causal. In contrast, we do not find similar effects for cloud systems, other types of software, or hardware surveyed by Census, highlighting AI's uniqueness. Moreover, AI's effect on distant lending is more pronounced in poorer areas and areas with less bank presence. Last, we find that banks with greater AI usage experience lower default rates among distant borrowers and charge these borrowers lower interest rates, suggesting that AI helps banks identify creditworthy borrowers at loan origination. Overall, our evidence suggests that AI helps banks reduce information asymmetry with borrowers, thereby enabling them to extend credit over greater distances.
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Workers' Job Prospects and Young Firm Dynamics
January 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-09
This paper investigates how worker beliefs and job prospects impact the wages and growth of young firms, as well as the aggregate economy. Building a heterogeneous-firm directed search model where workers gradually learn about firm types, I find that learning generates endogenous wage differentials for young firms. High-performing young firms must pay higher wages than equally high-performing old firms, while low-performing young firms offer lower wages than equally low-performing old firms. Reduced uncertainty or labor market frictions lower the wage differentials, thereby enhancing young firm dynamics and aggregate productivity. The results are consistent with U.S. administrative employee-employer matched data.
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The Effect of Oil News Shocks on Job Creation and Destruction
January 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-06
Using data from the Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM) and the Census of Manufacturing (CMF), we construct quarterly measures of job creation and destruction by 3-digit NAICS industries spanning from 1980Q3-2016Q4. These long series allow us to address three questions regarding the effect of oil news shocks. What is the average effect of oil news shocks on sectoral labor reallocation? What characteristics explain the observed heterogeneity in the average responses across industries? Has the response of US manufacturing changed over time? We find evidence that oil news shocks exert only a moderate effect on total manufacturing net employment growth but lead to a significant increase in job reallocation. However, we find a high degree of heterogeneity in responses across industries. We then show that the cross-industry variation in the sensitivity of net employment growth and excess job reallocation to oil news shocks is related to differences in energy costs, the rate of energy to capital expenditures, and the share of mature firms in the industry. Finally, we illustrate how the dynamic response of sectoral job creation and destruction to oil news shocks has declined since the mid-2000s.
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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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A Granular Look into Firms' Cash Portfolios
January 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-02
This paper uses confidential Census data to provide a granular look into the U.S. firms' cash holding portfolios encompassing nearly four decades. The data provide information on short-term investment securities held in the portfolios, such as time deposits, commercial paper and government securities in addition to cash. The security-level information reveals that portfolios of the same size can have very different levels of liquidity and riskiness as the composition of securities varies considerably across firms and over time. Firms with strong precautionary motives tend to allocate more toward relatively more liquid and less risky securities. Firms actively rebalance their portfolios in response to changing economic conditions or idiosyncratic shocks to securities they hold. Event studies using shocks to Treasury securities and commercial paper shows firms shifting away from affected securities and simultaneously adjusting weights of other securities.
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