Must-Read: Viktor Slavtchev and Simon Wiederhold: Does the Technological Content of Government Demand Matter for Private R&D?

Must-Read: Viktor Slavtchev and Simon Wiederhold: Does the Technological Content of Government Demand Matter for Private R&D?: “Governments purchase everything from airplanes to zucchini…

…This paper investigates the role of the technological content of government procurement in innovation…. Theoreticall… a shift in the composition of public purchases toward high-tech products translates into higher economy-wide returns to innovation, leading to an increase in the aggregate level of private research and development (R&D). Collecting unique panel data on federal procurement in US states, we find that reshuffling procurement toward high-tech industries has an economically and statistically significant positive effect on private R&D, even after extensively controlling for other R&D determinants. Instrumental-variable estimations support a causal interpretation of our findings.