The study examines lagged economic effects of research and development (R&D) investment on the market value of manufacturing firms listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange or the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in China. This study applies panel data analysis methods to address the following issues: 1) There might be an adjustment lag in the impact of R&D investment on corporate market value, and 2) Unobserved firm effects must be taken into account. The balanced panel data includes a total of 1,462 observations with 34 cross-sections of manufacturing firms listed on Chinese stock markets and with 27 time-specific quarterly periods from 2007 to 2017. The results indicate that the R&D investment of Chinese manufacturing firms tends to yield favorable market value of the firm with some adjustments to time. The results show that R&D investment exhibits a strong positive impact on their market value of manufacturing firms in Chinese stock markets. Moreover, R&D investment has a positive time-lag effect on the market value of the firm. Interestingly, the R&D investment of Chinese manufacturing firms generate a relatively constant positive effect on their market value, supporting the notion that the corresponding returns of R&D investment for such firms yield lagged but added market values.