Pakes, Ariel and Schankerman, Mark 
ORCID: 0009-0006-1071-7672
(1979)
The rate of obsolescence of knowledge, research gestation lags, and the private rate of return to research resources.
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National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA., USA.
Abstract
This paper points out the conceptual distinction between the rates of decay in the physical productivity of traditional capital goods and that of the appropriate revenues accruing to knowledge-producing activities, and notes that it is the latter parameter which is required in any study which constructs a stock of privately marketable knowledge. The rate of obsolescence of knowledge is estimated from a simple patent renewal and the estimates are found to be comparable to evidence provided by firms on the lifespan of the output of their R&D activities. These estimates, together with mean R&D gestation lags, are then used to correct previous estimates of the private excess rate of return to investment in research. We find that after the correction, the private excess rate of return to investment in research, at least in the early 1960's, was close to zero, which may explain why firms reduced the fraction of their resources allocated to research over the subsequent decade.
| Item Type: | Monograph (Working Paper) |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://www.nber.org |
| Additional Information: | © 1979 Ariel Pakes and Mark Schankerman |
| Divisions: | Economics STICERD |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory |
| Date Deposited: | 28 May 2008 10:23 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Oct 2024 03:15 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/5114 |
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