The Intellectual Spoils of War? Defense R&D, Productivity, and International Spillovers
Review of Economics and Statistics · 2023 · Enrico Moretti、Claudia Steinwender、John Van Reenen
中文摘要
我们考察政府研发资助——尤其是国防相关研发资助——对私人部门开展的研发及其最终对生产率增长的影响。我们使用经合组织（OECD）国家的行业—国家层面数据和法国的企业层面数据，估计将私人资助研发与滞后的政府资助研发联系起来的纵向模型。为处理政府研发资金配置可能存在的内生性问题，我们以预测的国防研发变化作为工具变量。在许多经合组织国家，国防相关研发支出是迄今为止最重要的公共创新补贴形式。在两组数据中，我们均发现了“挤入”而非“挤出”的证据：面向某一行业或企业的政府资助研发增加，会使该行业或企业的私人部门研发显著增加。平均而言，政府资助研发每增加10%，私人资助研发会额外增加5%至6%。我们还发现了国际溢出效应的证据：某一特定行业和国家的政府资助研发增加，会提高其他国家同一行业的私人研发。最后，我们发现，由国防研发增加所诱致的私人研发增长会带来生产率提升。
Abstract
Abstract We examine the impact of government funding for R&D—and defense-related R&D in particular—on privately conducted R&D and its ultimate effect on productivity growth. We estimate longitudinal models that relate privately funded R&D to lagged government-funded R&D using industry-country level data from OECD countries and firm level data from France. To deal with the potentially endogenous allocation of government R&D funds, we use changes in predicted defense R&D as an instrumental variable. In many OECD countries, expenditures for defense-related R&D represent by far the most important form of public subsidies for innovation. In both datasets, we uncover evidence of “crowding in” rather than “crowding out,” as increases in government-funded R&D for an industry or a firm result in significant increases in private sector R&D in that industry or firm. On average, a 10% increase in government-financed R&D generates a 5% to 6% additional increase in privately funded R&D. We also find evidence of international spillovers, as increases in government-funded R&D in a particular industry and country raise private R&D in the same industry in other countries. Finally, we find that increases in private R&D induced by increases in defense R&D result in productivity gains.