Advertising, Innovation and Economic Growth

This paper analyzes the implications of advertising for firm dynamics and economic growth through its interaction with R&D investment at the firm level. We develop a model of endogenous growth with firm heterogeneity that incorporates advertising decisions. We calibrate the model to match several empirical regularities across firm size using U.S. data. Through a novel interaction between R&D and advertising, our model provides microfoundations for the empirically observed negative relationship between both firm R&D intensity and growth, and firm size. Our model predicts substitutability between R&D and advertising at the firm level. Lower advertising costs are associated with lower R&D investment and slower economic growth. We provide empirical evidence supporting substitution between R&D and advertising using exogenous changes in the tax treatment of R&D expenditures across U.S. states. Finally, we find that R&D subsidies are more effective under an economy that includes advertising relative to one with no advertising.