Abstract Research and development tax credits often aim to increase investment in experimentation, hoping that firms invent fundamentally new technologies that in turn generate positive spillovers. Since most policies require that companies make profits in order to claim credits, they might also shift investments towards less risky refinement and exploitation. Following the availability of credits, we demonstrate that firms do not experiment but deepen invention in areas of extant expertise. We observe stronger shifts for firms operating in uncertain markets where search failures are more likely to reduce credit eligibility.

We analyze the evolution of markups for consumer products in the United States from 2006 to 2019. Using detailed data on prices and quantities for products in more than 100 distinct categories, we obtain a panel of markups, marginal costs, and flexible consumer preferences. Our empirical strategy uses separate random coefficients logit models for each category and year and an assumption that firms set prices to maximize profits. We find that markups increased by about 30% on average over the sample period. We attribute this change to decreases in marginal costs and a decline in consumer price sensitivity.