With the expiry of the Pharmaceutical Industry Investment Program (PIIP) in 2004, the Commission was asked to conduct an evaluation of the program’s rationale, effectiveness and efficiency. The study commenced in August 2002. The Commission found that this assistance scheme had significant...

Through the Rural Research and Development Corporations (RDCs), rural industries and the Australian Government together invest some $490 million a year in R&D. This co-investment model has important strengths, including: helping to ensure that public money is not spent on research of little...

The Productivity Commission’s research report into ‘Public Support for Science and Innovation’ was released March 2007. The Australian Government asked the Commission to evaluate the economic, social and environmental returns on this investment. The main message from the Commission’s...

This study analyses the role played by adjustment costs and R&D investment prices in total R&D productivity. The results show that on average, for each monetary unit increase in adjustment costs produces a fall in productivity of 0.034 monetary units.

In this paper we analyse the effects of simultaneous union wage bargaining in a simple two sector growth model. We show that the overall employment effect of unionisation is ambiguous and depends on the relative sectoral wage. Besides the employment effects we analyse how unionisation changes...

Research and Development (R&D) endogenous growth models predict and most evidence show that investment in R&D increases with economic development. We consider the type of human capital mainly used in research labs and show that the richest countries are investing proportionally less than middle...

In this paper we investigate the incidence of high technology acquisitions using a large international sample of acquisitions by public high technology firms. Controlling for firms’ financial characteristics, we examine the impact of the following innovation- related factors on the propensity...

This paper studies the impact of electricity deregulation and restructuring on research and development (R&D) expenditures of investor owned utilities. The differing pace of deregulation in the fifty states provides heterogeneity in institutional structure and competitive forces, and showcases...

We develop a new method to estimate the returns to R&D, their distribution, and their determinants. We model a continuous optimal treatment with outcome heterogeneity, where the treatment outcome depends on the applicant’s investment. The model takes into account application costs, and...

What determines the speed of the technology diffusion? What are the consequences of diffusion? This paper presents a model to address these questions. Skilled machine-users adopt a new technology first, while unskilled users wait until machines become more reliable and accessible. The quality...