THE IMPACT OF R&D EXPENDITURES ON CORPORATE PERFORMANCE: THE CASE OF WORLD R&D COMPANIES

Research and development (R&D) investment is widely recognised as one of the crucial elements of generating competitive advantage of contemporary companies. The global competition, which is becoming increasingly harsh and forces companies to provide value-added products, processes and services, constitutes a reason why R&D investment is indispensable in the contemporary business operations as they facilitate to keep the companies' position in the market in terms of their competitiveness. The main aim of this paper is therefore to examine the impact of R&D expenditures on corporate performance. Using a multiple regression analysis, a panel dataset of 1,700 world R&D companies for the period 2015-2017 is analysed. The empirical results reveal that R&D expenditures are not effective in the short-term period and bring certain benefits to companies in the long-term period. The findings of this paper provide several important theoretical and practical implications.