R & D و ارزش بازار شرکت های ژاپنی در 1990s

There is a concern in Japan that the R&D profitability of its domestic firms fell significantly in the 1990s, following the US pattern in the 1980s. This paper finds, however, that the effect of R&D on the market value of a firm, relative to that of tangible assets, increased in the 1990s in terms of both within firm variations and cross section variations, even though the average market value itself significantly fell. More trade and higher foreign ownership significantly enhanced the market value of a firm, and so did more patents in sectors such as pharmaceuticals. J. Japanese Int. Economies20 (2) (2006) 155–176.

The Japanese economy grew very little in the 1990s. The long stagnation of the Japanese economy in the 1990s suggests that it may have structural causes. The deterioration of R&D performance of Japanese firms is one candidate.1 The low Tobin's q of many of these firms in the latter part of 1990s (which covered barely the book value of the asset) and the stagnation of the growth of R&D relative to firm size may provide some support to such view (see Table 1). In addition, the sharply weakening international competitiveness of some high-tech industries such as semiconductor industry seems to provide anecdotal evidence supporting such view. Furthermore, the US experience of a substantial decline of R&D profitability in the 1980s may also provide a reason for us to wonder whether Japan faced a similar challenge one decade later. The R&D profitability of the US industry fell significantly in the 1980s (see Hall, 1993a and Hall, 1993b). Griliches (1994) notes that the appropriability of R&D might have fallen during the latter part of the 1970s and the 1980s, due to “the internationalization of R&D,

This paper has examined the capital market evaluation of the R&D investments of Japanese manufacturing firms in the 1990s. It has found that the effectiveness of R&D investment relative to that of tangible assets on the market value of a firm increased in the 1990s, irrespective of whether we evaluate the marginal contribution of R&D based on within variations of the firms or cross section variations, even though the market value itself significantly fell during this period on average. This finding is robust to the controls of firm fixed effects, industry by time effects (yearly effect in each of 57 manufacturing industries), and the other basic firm characteristics such as market share, the patent stocks owned and trade intensity. It is driven neither by the simultaneous decline of market value and R&D after the collapse of the bubble nor by the outliers in market values. This finding clearly indicates that it is unlikely that the decline of R&D efficiency of the Japanese firms has been the primary cause of the stagnation of the Japanese economy in the 1990s. The combination of sharply increasing marginal return of R&D relative to that of tangible assets in late 1990s identified in this paper and the stagnation of R&D expenditure relative to the tangible asset seems to suggest that the Japanese firms might have been constrained by the supply of risk capital for R&D in late 1990s. Such interpretation may be consistent with high significance of foreign ownership in explaining the market value of a firm.