AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE ACCUMULATIVE ANTECEDENTS OF RD PRODUCTIVITY

摘要

Research and development is a critical topic to business and government leaders who commit economic resources to its pursuit and to scholars seeking to understand the phenomena. An understanding of the antecedents of successful R&D was enhanced when Jaffe (1983) proposed a knowledge creation equation that accounted for the effects of knowledge spillover and industry technological opportunity in addition to the effects of R&D investment on the production of economically useful knowledge. This paper seeks to deepen our understanding by exploring the time-dependent cumulative effects of the spillover and technology opportunity variables examined by Jaffe (1983). This paper will build on the pertinent literature to suggest hypotheses to better explain the relationship between R&D investment and knowledge production as proxied by patent production. The hypothesis will be tested against a dataset built by examining twenty-five of the largest global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies based on data extracted from the NBER patent citation database and COMPUSTAT. A model will be developed to predict the rate at which R&D investment translates into economically useful knowledge as proxied by patent grants. Finally, the paper calls for future research to identify the managerial action that comprises the cumulative antecedents of R&D success.