中文摘要
美国政府通过授予研发(R&D)合同来激励企业开发创新技术,这些合同往往带有"保障需求"的隐含承诺。展现出强大技术能力的企业会获得针对由此产生的产品和服务的非竞争性生产合同作为回报。利用新整理的来自所有联邦机构的4.2万亿美元政府采购合同数据,并与美国上市公司进行匹配,我们记录了一种"挤入"效应,即政府研发合同导致企业科学研究投资的增加。这一效应集中于大型垂直一体化企业,且仅限于上游研发。我们认为,这些模式最好的解释是保障需求机制:当研发成功提供了通往未来非竞争性生产合同的可信路径时,企业会共同投资于上游研究。我们构建了一个理论框架,以解释政府何时将研发合同与生产合同捆绑在一起是最优的。我们的分析表明,当研发企业具备生产能力时,保障需求能够以更低的总成本使上游研发项目产出更高质量。我们的实证结果支持这些预测。此外,我们发现,随着政府日益将研发合同与生产合同脱钩,挤入效应已随时间减弱。我们讨论了这种脱钩的潜在影响。本文由创业与创新领域编辑 Toby Stuart 接收。资助:感谢 Alfred P. Sloan 基金会[资助号 G-2023-21022]提供的经费支持。补充材料:在线附录和数据文件可从 https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.00087 获取。
Abstract
The U.S. government incentivizes firms to develop innovative technologies by awarding research and development (R&D) contracts that often carry an implicit promise of “guaranteed demand.” Firms that demonstrate strong technological capabilities are rewarded with noncompetitive production contracts for the resulting products and services. Using newly assembled data on $4.2 trillion in government procurement contracts from all federal agencies, matched to U.S. publicly traded firms, we document a “crowding-in” effect, where government R&D contracts lead to increased investment in corporate scientific research. This effect is concentrated in large, vertically integrated firms and limited to upstream R&D. We argue that these patterns are best explained by a guaranteed demand mechanism: Firms co-invest in upstream research when success offers a credible path to future noncompetitive production contracts. We develop a theoretical framework to explain when it is optimal for the government to bundle R&D and production contracts. Our analysis shows that guaranteed demand can produce higher quality at a lower total cost for upstream R&D projects when the R&D firms have production capabilities. Our empirical results support these predictions. Additionally, we find that the crowding-in effect has weakened over time as the government has increasingly decoupled R&D contracts from production contracts. We discuss the potential implications of this decoupling. This paper was accepted by Toby Stuart, entrepreneurship and innovation. Funding: Financial support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation [Grant G-2023-21022]. Supplemental Material: The online appendices and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.00087 .