Innovation Activity in South Africa : Measuring the Returns to R&D

Improvements in productivity is necessary to effectively increase economic growth in the long term.The literature emphasises a positive correlation between firm-level innovation and productivity gains, although evidence for developing countries has...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Schaffer, Mark, Steenkamp, Andre, Flowerday, Wayde, Goddard, John Gabriel
Format:	Working Paper
Language:	English
Published:	World Bank, Washington, DC 2018
Subjects:	INNOVATION RETURNS TO R&D TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY TECHNOLOGY CHANGE R&D INTENSITY
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/145271530821525760/Measuring-the-returns-to-Research-and-Development http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30265

id	okr-10986-30265
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-302652021-05-25T09:17:10Z Innovation Activity in South Africa : Measuring the Returns to R&D Schaffer, Mark Steenkamp, Andre Flowerday, Wayde Goddard, John Gabriel INNOVATION RETURNS TO R&D TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY TECHNOLOGY CHANGE R&D INTENSITY Improvements in productivity is necessary to effectively increase economic growth in the long term.The literature emphasises a positive correlation between firm-level innovation and productivity gains, although evidence for developing countries has been less conclusive. It is unsurprising then, that policymakers and researchers widely acknowledge that innovation is one of the major drivers of productivity growth, and is therefore of critical importance to the competitiveness and growth of firms and the macro-economy. We look at the dynamics of R&D expenditure in South Africa over the period 2009 to 2014 at the firm level using the South African Revenue Service and National Treasury Firm-Level Panel, which is an unbalanced panel dataset of administrative tax data from 2008 to 2016. Expenditure on R&D is used extensively as a proxy for innovation in the literature as it improves the capability for developing new products and processes and improving existing ones. We use a production function approach to estimate the return to R&D in South African manufacturing firms, a theoretical framework which is the predominant approach in the literature. This paper, however, is one of only a few estimating the return to R&D using firm-level data in a developing country. 2018-08-21T14:27:40Z 2018-08-21T14:27:40Z 2018-06-29 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/145271530821525760/Measuring-the-returns-to-Research-and-Development http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30265 English CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research :: Working Paper Publications & Research Africa South Africa
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	English
topic	INNOVATION RETURNS TO R&D TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY TECHNOLOGY CHANGE R&D INTENSITY
spellingShingle	INNOVATION RETURNS TO R&D TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY TECHNOLOGY CHANGE R&D INTENSITY Schaffer, Mark Steenkamp, Andre Flowerday, Wayde Goddard, John Gabriel Innovation Activity in South Africa : Measuring the Returns to R&D
geographic_facet	Africa South Africa
description	Improvements in productivity is necessary to effectively increase economic growth in the long term.The literature emphasises a positive correlation between firm-level innovation and productivity gains, although evidence for developing countries has been less conclusive. It is unsurprising then, that policymakers and researchers widely acknowledge that innovation is one of the major drivers of productivity growth, and is therefore of critical importance to the competitiveness and growth of firms and the macro-economy. We look at the dynamics of R&D expenditure in South Africa over the period 2009 to 2014 at the firm level using the South African Revenue Service and National Treasury Firm-Level Panel, which is an unbalanced panel dataset of administrative tax data from 2008 to 2016. Expenditure on R&D is used extensively as a proxy for innovation in the literature as it improves the capability for developing new products and processes and improving existing ones. We use a production function approach to estimate the return to R&D in South African manufacturing firms, a theoretical framework which is the predominant approach in the literature. This paper, however, is one of only a few estimating the return to R&D using firm-level data in a developing country.
format	Working Paper
author	Schaffer, Mark Steenkamp, Andre Flowerday, Wayde Goddard, John Gabriel
author_facet	Schaffer, Mark Steenkamp, Andre Flowerday, Wayde Goddard, John Gabriel
author_sort	Schaffer, Mark
title	Innovation Activity in South Africa : Measuring the Returns to R&D
title_short	Innovation Activity in South Africa : Measuring the Returns to R&D
title_full	Innovation Activity in South Africa : Measuring the Returns to R&D
title_fullStr	Innovation Activity in South Africa : Measuring the Returns to R&D
title_full_unstemmed	Innovation Activity in South Africa : Measuring the Returns to R&D
title_sort	innovation activity in south africa : measuring the returns to r&d
publisher	World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate	2018
url	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/145271530821525760/Measuring-the-returns-to-Research-and-Development http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30265
_version_	1764471563769348096

Innovation Activity in South Africa : Measuring the Returns to R&D

Similar Items