What hampers or increases the R&D intensity of firms?

Article  -  Wednesday, 14 December 2022

Cattaruzzo, S., Segarra, A. and Teruel, M. (2022): "Firm-level contributions to the R&D intensity distribution: evidence and policy implications", Economics of Innovation and New Technology

This paper decomposes the Spanish aggregate R&D distribution to disentangle the contributions of R&D public financing, gazelle firms, and financial constraints. Applying the Chernozhukov, Fernández-Val and Melly (2013) distribution regression approach, we estimate the contributions of these components at each point of the distribution. The analysis is carried out for two periods, pre-crisis 2004-2008 and post-crisis 2009-2014. 

We thereby introduce a comparative perspective that allows us to consider possible business cycle effects. Our findings show that the main explanatory factors of the significant post-crisis drop in Spanish aggregate R&D are changes in the public financing scheme and the decreased contribution of gazelles.

Our results provide a rigorous analysis of Spanish R&D, hint at a possible transmission channel for reduced business dynamism, and offer interesting insights for policymaking.
 

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