This paper compares R&D productivity change across countries considering the fact that national R&D expenditure may produce multiple outputs, including patents and journal articles. Based on the concept of directional distance function and Luenberger productivity index, this paper develops a Luenberger R&D productivity change (LRC) index and then decomposes it into R&D efficiency change (catch-up effect) and R&D technical change (innovation effect). Utilizing a panel dataset of 29 countries over the 1998-2005 period to implement the empirical estimation, the results show that the R&D productivity growth is mainly attributed to the innovation effect; meanwhile, non-OECD countries have better performance on both efficiency change and technical change than their OECD counterparts. Moreover, patent-oriented R&D productivity growth serves as the main source of national R&D productivity growth than the journal article-oriented one. © 2012 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary.
CITATION STYLE
Chen, C. P., Hu, J. L., & Yang, C. H. (2013). Produce patents or journal articles? A cross-country comparison of R&D productivity change. Scientometrics, 94(3), 833–849. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0811-9
Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.