Improving Productivity And Innovation Metrics: The Case of Financial Services

这项研究开发了企业的衡量标准？致力于金融服务业新产品和商业模式开发的资源，这项活动被称为？金融研发？这项工作有助于填补我们对美国一个庞大而重要的经济活动部门的投资和创新过程的巨大认识空白。传统的研发支出反映了已完成工作的成本。由科学家和工程师，因为制造业的创新过程是众所周知的起源于实验室。但是，信用违约互换、衍生品、电子支付系统、自动取款机等金融创新来自哪里？最近对金融创新经验文献(Frame And White 2004)的回顾表明，人们对这一过程知之甚少。我们研究的新方面将是通过利用劳工统计局(BLS)基于雇主的详细职业和行业就业和工资数据，进一步发展可用来衡量无形投资和资本的指标。劳工统计局的数据将与从行业高管的半结构化访谈中获得的信息结合起来，以建立对已完成工作的估计。由在(或为)金融服务公司进行设计和开发活动的员工(或承包商)执行。访谈将利用世界大型企业联合会S广泛的商业联系人网络来获取所需的信息，并总体上扩大我们对金融服务行业创新过程的了解。由此产生的行业级别的金融研发系列将补充传统的研发措施，并增强Corrado、Hulten和Sinhel(2006)对无形资本对美国经济增长贡献的宏观经济估计。更深远的影响：商务部长设立的创新咨询委员会强调了对创新和知识经济的更好衡量标准的必要性。它的主要发现之一是更好地衡量商业无形投资，另一个是对经济增长来源进行更全面的核算。我们的研究旨在推进这两个目标，通过从美国经济中主要未被研究的部门的经验生产率文献的角度进行大规模的工作。

This research develops measures of firms? resources devoted to the development of new products and business models in the financial services industry, an activity called ?finance R&D.? The work helps fill a vast gap in our knowledge of the investment and innovation process for a large and important sector of economic activity in the United States. Traditional R&D spending captures the cost of the ?work done? by scientists and engineers because the innovation process in manufacturing is well understood to originate in a laboratory. But where do financial innovations, such as credit default swaps, derivatives, electronic payment systems, ATMs, and the like originate? A recent review of the empirical literature on financial innovation (Frame and White 2004) suggests little is known about the process.The novel aspect of our research will be to further develop available measures of intangible investment and capital by exploiting Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employer-based datasets on employment and wages by detailed occupation and industry. The BLS data will be used in combination with information obtained from semi structured interviews with industry executives to build estimates of the ?work done? by the employees (or contractors) who conduct the design and development activity in (or for) financial services firms. The interviews will leverage the Conference Board?s extensive network of business contacts to obtain the required information as well as to generally expand our knowledge of the innovation process in financial services industries. The resulting industry-level series for finance R&D will both supplement traditional R&D measures and enhance the Corrado, Hulten, and Sichel (2006) macroeconomic estimates of the contribution of intangible capital to U.S. economic growth.Broader impacts: The need for better metrics of innovation and the knowledge economy was underscored by the Advisory Committee on Innovation established by the Secretary of Commerce. One of its main findings was to better measure business intangible investments, and another was to develop a fuller accounting of the sources of economic growth. Our research aims to advance these two goals by working on a large and from the standpoint of the empirical productivity literature largely under researched sector of the U.S. economy.