at the Business Level: Results from the PIMS Data Base

The recent slowdown in productivity growth in the United States and elsewhere has increased interest in understanding its determinants. Among the determinants commanding attention have been expenditures for research and development. R&D investment has attracted attention because a slowdown in its growth seemed to coincide with the productiv-ity slowdown, and because earlier studies of the R&D-productivity connection had found R&D to be an important determinant of produc-tivity growth. Recent work on R&D and productivity growth, however, presents a relatively mixed picture. While studies on 1950s and 1960s data generally found positive effects, productivity equations for the 1970s found the coefficient alternately collapsing (Griliches 1980; Agnew and Wise 1978; Scherer 1981; Terleckyj (1980) and reviving (Griliches and Lichtenberg, this volume; Scherer 1981), depending on the data used and, in particular, on the level of aggregation. Where disaggregated data were explored, a relatively sizeable effect of R&D was found, even i