Rising R&D Intensity and Economic Growth

Over the past decades, private R&D spending in the US and other developed countries has been growing faster than GDP. At the same time, the growth rates of per capita and aggregate output have been rather stable, possibly declining slightly. This paper proposes a growth model that can account for the observed phenomenon by explicitly describing competition among technological leaders and followers in individual markets in a way that is consistent with existing studies on firms’ motivation to invest in R&D. The model shows the possibility that the unsustainable trend of rising R&D intensity persists for a very long time