【报告主题】A Look into Firms' R&D Activities through Online Job Postings
【主讲嘉宾】郑悦，香港科技大学助理教授。
【报告时间】2023年4月11日 14：00
【报告地点】会计学院108室
【内容提要】Information about firms' research and development (R&D) activities is considered proprietary and is rarely disclosed. This study examines firms' R&D activities through a new information source – R&D job posting. Using the detailed textual information in job postings to identify R&D positions, we find an increasing demand for R&D human capital by US firms from 2010 to 2021. Controlling for other information sources on firms' R&D activities (R&D expense and narrative information disclosed in 10-K), we show that R&D job postings have incremental predictive power for firms' future innovation output, with the predictive power being more pronounced for firms with higher growth opportunity and lower labor intensity. Exploring the qualitative information of R&D job postings, we show that R&D postings that require new technology skills or higher education attainment have stronger predictive power for future innovation. Lastly, we show that the stock market reacts positively to firms' R&D postings. However, the market undervalues such information, reflected by the positive link between firms' R&D postings and future abnormal returns. Taken together, our results show that R&D job postings are an important information source for understanding firms' innovation activities.