Empirical Evidence on Cooperative R&D

The scope of this chapter is limited to the empirical content of the qualitative theoretical results derived in Section 10.5. It is not intended to estimate structural form equations of the theoretical model which would be too ambitious given the simplifying assumptions of the oligopoly game (e.g. symmetry of firms). In accordance with Slade (1995), the static theoretical model is used as a tool to ‘provide useful summary statistics concerning the outcomes of oligopolistic interactions’ (p. 369). Basically, reduced form R&D intensity equations are estimated to achieve some insight if these outcomes are reflected in real data.