Welfare Measures in Dynamic Firm R&D Games

The present paper examines the welfare effects of a dynamic Research and Development (R&D) game at the firm level in a two-country, two-firm, intra-industry trade context. Economists do not use the trade balance as a measure of economic welfare, but it is often used in the public arena. The primary result of the paper is that the dynamic time path of social surplus and the trade balance do not track well together. This paper suggests that economists thinking about dynamic R&D games will have to defend imports as having a positive effect on social surplus regardless of trade balance effects.