earticle

영어

In this paper, we conduct a comparative study for the effect of R&D investment on total factor productivity(TFP) in order to compare the efficiency of R&D spending among different OECD countries. For the analysis, we first pool the data from 22 OECD member countries during 1981-2004, and estimate TFP elasticity of R&D investment of that group. Then we evaluate TFP elasticity of R&D investment of five major advanced countries such as USA, Japan, Canada, Italy and Korea from 1970 to 2004. Finally, we investigate whether the efficiency of R&D investment of Korea has improved over the period by dividing the period into two parts, before and after 1990. From the empirical analysis, we find that the estimated R&D efficiency of Korea has been similar to that of a group of 22 OECD countries. The estimated R&D efficiency of Korea has been higher than those of Canada and Italy, but lower than those of USA and Japan. In sum, the R&D efficiency of Korea has reached the average level of OECD member countries. In addition, we find that the R&D efficiency of Korea after 1990 has been much higher than the efficiency before 1990. Thus, we can say that the R&D efficiency of Korea has substantially improved over the course of a period. We surmise that increased R&D spending done by major conglomerates and technological innovation have contributed the improvement of R&D efficiency since the year of 1990.