The impact of economic policy uncertainty and monetary policy on R&D investment: An option pricing approach

Abstract

This paper adopts a real options approach to investigate the effects of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and monetary policy on R&D investment. Using a panel of U.S. firms over the period 2000-2019, we show that higher (lower) EPU and contractionary (expansionary) monetary policy exert a positive (negative) and significant influence on R&D investment. Our findings shed light on the counter-intuitive behavior of R&D investments, which may help policymakers to anticipate such collateral effects.