This article analyses the relationship between productivity growth and R&D investments of Spanish manufacturing firms during the 1990s. The theoretical model is a version of the Cobb-Douglas production function in its growth rate form. The purpose is to estimate the rate of return to R&D expenditures. The econometric specification is a distributed lag model. The estimation applies the generalized method of moments method. The main empirical finding is that a positive and significant role is played by R&D expenditures on productivity growth. The rate of return to R&D expenditures is 26.598%.

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