期刊-NBER美国国民经济研究局-Spring1986_44页_814kb

NBER Reporter Summary - Spring 1986

Core Content

The NBER Reporter for Spring 1986 highlights the Program in Productivity and Technical Change, focusing on the role of R&D expenditures, capital measurement, and technological spillovers in economic growth. It also discusses foreign exchange markets, monetary policy, and economic structure in the context of open economies.

Main Topics and Key Findings

1. Productivity and Technical Change

• Productivity is a major driver of long-term economic growth.
• The U.S. economy has shown poor growth performance, prompting more attention to understanding productivity and its determinants.
• Productivity growth is influenced by:
  • Accumulation of physical and human capital
  • Growth in the base of technical knowledge
• The technological base is produced through:
  • Industrial R&D investments
  • Public and private science expenditures in the U.S. and abroad

2. R&D and Productivity Growth

• R&D expenditures contribute to productivity growth in the 1970s, with no significant decline in effectiveness compared to the 1960s.
• Basic research contributes more than privately financed R&D.
• Private R&D has a larger impact on private productivity and profitability than federally financed R&D.
• Japanese firms spend similar amounts on R&D relative to sales as U.S. firms, but their productivity growth is higher due to:
  • Reducing labor force (in contrast to U.S. firms increasing labor)
  • Higher contribution of physical capital to growth

3. Patent Data and R&D Output

• Patent data are used as a proxy for R&D output due to difficulties in measuring real output.
• R&D and patenting have a strong contemporaneous relationship, but long lags are hard to estimate due to random walk behavior in R&D budgets.
• Reverse causality is suggested: successful research may lead to patent applications and further R&D investment.
• Patent value varies significantly across countries:
  • France and UK: ~$7,000 average value per patent
  • Germany: ~$17,000 average value per patent
• Patent value distribution is highly skewed, with a small percentage of patents holding a large share of value.
• Annual returns to patent protection decay quickly, with an obsolescence rate of 10–20% per year.
• Patent renewals in the U.S. offer potential for testing models and estimating patent values.

4. Technological Spillovers

• Spillovers of R&D across firms and industries are studied using patent data and technological space.
• Firms with R&D-intensive neighbors produce more patents per dollar of their own R&D and experience higher productivity growth.
• Spillover effects are more significant for some industries than others, suggesting that cross-industry regressions may not be appropriate.

5. Federal R&D and Private Expenditures

• Federal R&D does not necessarily stimulate private R&D, as private R&D may be driven by future government contracts.
• The stimulative effect of federal R&D is more related to fluctuations in federal procurement than to its R&D component.

Other Research Areas

• Durable equipment price measurement is being revised by Robert J. Gordon, with potential implications for postwar capital accumulation and productivity analysis.
• Producer Price Index (PPI) measurement errors are being investigated using Census unit values.
• Panel data analysis with random measurement errors is being developed by Zvi Griliches and Jacob A. Hausman.
• Small, R&D-intensive firms are studied by Richard Ericson and Adam B. Jaffe.
• Mergers and firm mortality are analyzed by Sumanth Addanki.
• Energy price changes are examined for their impact on productivity and firm behavior.

Open Economy Research

6. Economic Structure, Wage Indexation, and Monetary Policy

• Wage indexation and monetary policy are critical for adjusting to real and nominal shocks.
• Nominal wage contracts can create dead-weight loss in labor markets, which can be mitigated by optimal wage indexation.
• Fixed exchange rates are more desirable in economies with high volatility in monetary shocks and foreign interest rates.
• Optimal wage adjustment rules depend on:
  • Degree of openness to international trade
  • Heterogeneity of skill distribution

7. Deviations from Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)

• PPP is a key link in international economic models, but persistent deviations are observed in empirical studies.
• Deviations are influenced by:
  • Cost of goods arbitrage
  • Gradual price adjustment
  • Limited market power of producers
• The model explains persistent deviations and shows that:
  • Smaller substitutability between domestic and foreign goods leads to longer deviations
  • Higher labor share also correlates with longer deviations
  • Greater substitutability increases the magnitude but reduces the duration of output shocks

Additional Sections

• Conferences and Meetings:
  • A conference on "Quantitative Studies of R&D in Industry" was held in Paris, 1983.
  • Two miniconferences on "Economics of Spillovers" were held in Cambridge, 1984 and 1985.
  • Regular program meetings were held, with the last in March 1986.
• New Program Members:
  • Timothy Bresnahan, Peter Reiss, Fumio Hayashi, Richard Levin, and Robert Sickles were added to the program in 1985.
• Future Research Directions:
  • Testing models using U.S. patent renewals.
  • Further studies on monopolistic competition, exchange rate regimes, and wage indexation.

Conclusion

The Program in Productivity and Technical Change at the NBER is actively exploring the determinants of productivity growth, the role of R&D, and the impact of technological spillovers. The program also examines monetary and exchange rate policies in open economies, emphasizing the importance of wage indexation, openness, and price flexibility in economic adjustment. The integration of microeconomic and macroeconomic models is a key focus, with ongoing efforts to improve data measurement and empirical analysis.