The contribution of research and innovation to productivity
- Kevin Fox, University of New South Wales
Overview
This seminar will examine the impact of investment in research and innovation on Australian market sector productivity.
While previous studies have largely focused on a narrow class of private sector intangible assets as a source of productivity gains, this research shows that there is a broad range of other business sector intangible assets that can significantly affect productivity.
The seminar will pay special attention to the role played by public funding for research and innovation. The empirical results suggest that there are significant spillovers to productivity from public sector R&D spending on research agencies and higher education.
We find no evidence for productivity spillovers from indirect public funding for the business enterprise sector, civil sector or defence R&D.
These findings have implications for government innovation policy as they provide insights into possible productivity gains from government funding reallocations.
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Kevin Fox is Professor of Economics, and Director of the Centre for Applied Economic Research, at the University of New South Wales Sydney, Australia. He works primarily in the field of economic measurement, with a focus on productivity and prices. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and an elected member of the NBER-affiliated US Conference on Research in Income and Wealth. He was appointed as an adviser to the Australian Treasury in 2016, he is a member of the Australian Bureau of Statistics Methodology Advisory Committee, and chaired the 16th Series CPI Review Advisory Group in 2009-10.
