A key feature of the 2008 revision of the System of National Accounts was the treatment of research and development (R&D) expenditure as investment. The question arises whether the standard approach toward accounting for growth contribution of assets is justified, given the special nature of R&D that provides capital services by affecting the working of other inputs as a whole—akin to technical change and often requires up-front investment with sunk costs. We model R&D inputs with a restricted cost function and compare econometric estimates with those derived under a standard index number approach but find no significant differences. However, we cannot reject the hypothesis of increasing returns to scale. The standard multi-factor productivity (MFP) measure is then broken down into a scale effect and a residual productivity effect, each of which explains about half of overall MFP change. The scale effect points to the importance of the demand side and market size for productivity growth. We also compute mark-up rates of prices over marginal cost and find widespread evidence of rising mark-ups for the period 1985–2017.

中文翻译：

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经合组织国家的生产力衡量、研发资产和加成

2008 年国民账户体系修订的一个主要特点是将研发（R&D）支出视为投资。考虑到研发的特殊性质，它通过影响其他投入的整体运作来提供资本服务——类似于技术变革，并且通常需要预先投资沉没成本。我们使用受限成本函数对研发投入进行建模，并将计量经济学估计与根据标准指数方法得出的估计进行比较，但没有发现显着差异。但是，我们不能拒绝规模报酬递增的假设。然后将标准的多因素生产率 (MFP) 测量分解为规模效应和剩余生产率效应，每一个都解释了大约一半的整体 MFP 变化。规模效应表明需求侧和市场规模对生产率增长的重要性。我们还计算了价格相对于边际成本的加价率，并发现了 1985-2017 年期间加价上涨的广泛证据。