R&D Spillovers for Public R&D Productivity

ABSTRACT This paper empirically investigates whether the productivity of a public (government-funded) R&D project improves when the aggregate R&D investment in the same technology field increases. Based on the unique project level data that cover almost entire public R&D projects in Korea, this paper shows that aggregate investment in other public R&D projects in the same technology field increases a public R&D project’s outputs both independent of its project expenditure (additive spillover effects) and interactive with its project expenditure (multiplicative spillover effects). The spillover effects from the aggregate private R&D investment in the same technology field also exist, but to a much lesser extent.