Productivity, Innovation Spillovers, and Mergers: Evidence from a Panel of US Firms

We investigate the impact of mergers and product innovation on labour productivity through a unique panel data set of roughly 2000 publicly traded U.S. manufacturing firms from 1980 to 2003. OLS estimates reveal that mergers interacted with citation-weighted patents are significantly correlated with increases in labour productivity. OLS and IV estimates of citation-weighted patent stocks with respect to firm-specific labour productivity are positive and consistently significant. Further, mergers are significantly correlated with a rise in citation-weighted patent stocks and research and development (R & D) spending. In tandem, our findings suggest that larger firms resulting from mergers spend more on innovation, which results in higher quality patents, and increased labour productivity.