R&D, Size and Firm Growth in Taiwan‘s Electronics Industry

This paper documents the relationship between R&D, firm size, and growth rate for a panel data of Taiwanese electronics firms. Using GMM method to control for endogeneity of R&D, the main finding is that an increase in R&D induces a higher growth rate and this impact is particularly higher for small firms. Testing Gibrat’s law shows that small firms indeed have a higher growth rate than their larger counterparts, while size is independent with firm growth in the group of large-sized firms, supporting the weak form of Gibrat’s law. Copyright Springer 2005