A model of firm innovation illustrates the effects of the threat of imitation and product varieties on a representative firm's decision to invest in research and development to produce new product varieties. The model motivates two empirical questions: (1) Is research and development partially...

Knowledge accumulation means either new knowledge (an increase in its quality), greater access to existing knowledge (an increase in its quantity), or both. The authors examine the relative contribution of these two components of knowledge to total factor productivity (TFP) for North-North and...

The National School for Professional Technology Education (CONALEP) is Mexico's largest and oldest technical education system. CONALEP serves low-income students at the upper-secondary school level in Mexico. The labor market performance of CONALEP graduates has been evaluated four times in the...

This paper uses a new data set of 12,000 firms in China to estimate the returns to research and development investment and its spillover effects, and investigates how the returns to research and development depend on firm incentives. For the firms in the sample, the results show that on average...

The role of innovation in improving productivity might vary according to a country's relative position in technology advancement. Frontier countries might benefit more from policies that promote firms' internal innovation (create), while follower countries would gain more from policies favoring...

This paper applies meta-analysis techniques to a sample of 37 studies published during 2004-2011. These papers assess the impact of direct subsidies on business research and development. The results show that the effect of public investment on research and development is predominantly positive...

Matching grants are one of the most common types of private sector development programs used in developing countries. But government subsidies to private firms can be controversial. A key question is that of additionality: do these programs get firms to undertake innovative activities that they...

Using a new global data base on patents and innovation inputs, the authors examine the process of knowledge creation measured by the dynamic relationship between research and development and U.S. patents granted. They confirm at the country level the recurrent micro-level finding of a strong...

The authors present empirical evidence on the determinants of industry-level multifactor productivity growth. They focus on "traditional factors," including the process of technological catch up, human capital, and research and development (R&D), as well as institutional factors affecting labor...

Over the past few decades, fiscal policy has been about 30 percent more procyclical and about 40 percent more volatile in commodity-exporting emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) than in other EMDEs. Both procyclicality and volatility of fiscal policy-which share some underlying...