The impact of spillovers on strategic R&D under uncertainty

Abstract

This study examines the impact of technological spillovers on competitive and cooperative R&D investments under uncertainty. It assumes that the innovation size is given and an increase in R&D expenditure increases the probability of success. It focuses on the symmetric equilibrium and finds that: (i) the equilibrium R&D expenditure under R&D competition (resp. R&D cooperation) may increase (resp. decrease) with the degree of spillovers if the spillovers are sufficiently small, the innovation size is big enough and the probability of success is high (resp. low) enough; (ii) under R&D competition the privately optimal R&D expenditure may overshoot the social optimum if the spillovers are sufficiently small; (iii) under R&D cooperation the private optimum is socially insufficient regardless of the size of spillovers.