Heterogeneous Innovation over the Business Cycle
研究发现，企业在经济衰退期更倾向于探索式创新，而在扩张期更倾向于利用式创新，这种效应在周期性更强的行业中更为显著。
Abstract Schumpeter (1939) claims that recessions are periods of “creative destruction,” concentrating innovation that is useful for the long-term growth of the economy. However previous research finds that standard measures of firms’ innovation, such as R&D expenditures or raw patent counts, concentrate in booms. We argue that these measures do not capture shifts in firms’ innovative search strategies. We contemplate firms’ choice between exploration versus exploitation over the business cycle and find evidence with more nuanced measures of patent characteristics that firms shift toward exploration during contractions and exploitation during expansions, with a stronger effect for firms in more cyclical industries.