Discussion paper 13/09 R&D Intensity, Technology Transfer and Absorptive Capacity

In the line of Schumpeterian fully endogenous growth theory, this study attempts to investigate whether differences in research intensity as well as absorptive capacity help to explain cross-country differences in productivity growth in a panel of 55 sample countries including 23 OECD and 32 developing economies over the period 1970 to 2004. Using several indicators of innovative activity and product variety empirical results from system GMM estimator confirm that research intensity has significant positive effect on productivity growth in both the OECD and developing countries. TFP growth is also found to be enhanced by the distance to technology frontier in both the group of countries. R&D based absorptive capacity seems to have significant positive impact on productivity growth in both the groups though strong in OECD countries. Human capital based technology transfer is found significant and robust in both the OECD and developing countries. Absorptive capacity appears to be sensitive to the model specification and measurement of innovative activity as well as product variety