Bakker, Gerben ORCID: 0000-0001-6109-0693 (2013) Money for nothing: how firms have financed R&D-projects since the Industrial Revolution. Economic History working paper series (182/2013). Department of Economic History, The London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.
|
PDF
Download (377kB) | Preview |
Abstract
We investigate the long-run historical pattern of R&D-outlays by reviewing aggregate growth rates and historical cases of particular R&D projects, following the historical-institutional approach of Alfred Chandler (1962), Douglass North (1981) and Oliver Williamson (1985). We find that even the earliest R&D-projects used non-insignificant cash outlays and that until the 1970s aggregate R&D outlays grew far faster than GDP, despite five well-known challenges that implied that R&D could only be financed with cash, for which no perfect market existed: the presence of sunk costs, real uncertainty, long time lags, adverse selection, and moral hazard. We then review a wide variety of organisational forms and institutional instruments that firms historically have used to overcome these financing obstacles, and without which the enormous growth of R&D outlays since the nineteenth century would not have been possible.
Item Type: | Monograph (Working Paper) |
---|---|
Official URL: | http://www.lse.ac.uk/economicHistory/workingPapers... |
Additional Information: | © 2013 The Author |
Divisions: | Accounting Economic History |
Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HG Finance |
JEL classification: | N - Economic History > N2 - Financial Markets and Institutions > N20 - General, International, or Comparative N - Economic History > N8 - Micro-Business History > N80 - General, International, or Comparative O - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth > O2 - Development Planning and Policy > O21 - Planning Models; Planning Policy |
Date Deposited: | 21 Nov 2013 14:28 |
Last Modified: | 13 Sep 2024 20:25 |
URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/54518 |
Actions (login required)
View Item |