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Innovation by Entrants and Incumbents

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  • Daron Acemoglu
  • Dan Vu Cao
Abstract
We extend the basic Schumpeterian endogenous growth model by allowing incumbents to undertake innovations to improve their products, while entrants engage in more "radical" innovations to replace incumbents. Our model provides a tractable framework for the analysis of growth driven by both entry of new firms and productivity improvements by continuing firms. Unlike in the basic Schumpeterian models, subsidies to potential entrants might decrease economic growth because they discourage productivity improvements by incumbents in response to reduced entry, which may outweigh the positive effect of greater creative destruction. As the model features entry of new firms and expansion and exit of existing firms, it also generates a non-degenerate equilibrium firm size distribution. We show that, when there is also costly imitation preventing any sector from falling too far below the average, the stationary firm size distribution is Pareto with an exponent approximately equal to one (the so-called "Zipf distribution").

Suggested Citation

  • Daron Acemoglu & Dan Vu Cao, 2010. "Innovation by Entrants and Incumbents," NBER Working Papers 16411, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16411
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

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