Narrow Results

There has been a pronounced increase in research and development (R&D) expenditure in Singapore since the late 1990s, with government spending accounting for a sizeable share. This increase has been spurred by increasing public policy emphasis on research and innovation as engines of economic growth. Building upon earlier work (Ho et al., 2009; Ho and Wong, 2017), this paper provides an updated analysis of the impact of R&D on the economic performance of Singapore over four decades from 1978 to 2019 through the use of time series analysis. The Cobb–Douglas production function-based analysis shows a long-run equilibrium relationship between total factor productivity (TFP) and R&D investments. We found that in both long- and short-run productivity of R&D, Singapore tends to lag behind the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations. This suggests leakage of value capture and low absorptive capacity of local firms. Possibility of R&D productivity improvements induced by major policy changes over the last two decades was examined, but no evidence of significant structural breaks was found. Lastly, Granger causality analysis reveals that public sector R&D augments private sector R&D capital, thus playing an important role in generating externalities and spillover effects. Policy implications of our findings for Singapore are discussed.

The paper investigates the relationship between investment in research and development (R&D), innovation expenses, and productivity of manufacturing companies. These empirical results have shown that innovation investments (1) improve the performance of industrial companies with the elasticity of 0.09; (2) innovation investment has an impact on the performance of the company, and the extent of this impact depends on the value of R&D investment and has a range of elasticity ranging from 0.03 (for low volumes of R&D investment) to 0.16 in high volumes of R&D investment; (3) the relationship between innovation investment and the growth of performance is nonlinear in nature and has a strong positive relationship only after a critical mass of innovation investment has been reached; (4) a significant role in the relationship of innovation investment and productivity is played by the features of the industry in which the company operates (the companies that operate in high-tech industries not only invest more in R&D and innovation but also have a better performance due to research and development); (5) companies of low-tech industries have a negative elasticity of innovation investment and productivity, which is due to the influence of unprofitable innovation investments (appropriability effect), i.e. additional profits from the investment are not significant.

The paper investigates the relationship between investment in research and development (R&D), innovation expenses, and productivity of manufacturing companies. These empirical results have shown that innovation investments (1) improve the performance of industrial companies with the elasticity of 0.09; (2) innovation investment has an impact on the performance of the company, and the extent of this impact depends on the value of R&D investment and has a range of elasticity ranging from 0.03 (for low volumes of R&D investment) to 0.16 in high volumes of R&D investment; (3) the relationship between innovation investment and the growth of performance is nonlinear in nature and has a strong positive relationship only after a critical mass of innovation investment has been reached; (4) a significant role in the relationship of innovation investment and productivity is played by the features of the industry in which the company operates (the companies that operate in high-tech industries not only invest more in R&D and innovation but also have a better performance due to research and development); (5) companies of low-tech industries have a negative elasticity of innovation investment and productivity, which is due to the influence of unprofitable innovation investments (appropriability effect), i.e. additional profits from the investment are not significant.