Evaluating the robustness of the effect of public subsidies on firms' R&D: an application to Italy



Título del documento: Evaluating the robustness of the effect of public subsidies on firms' R&D: an application to Italy
Revista: Journal of applied economics
Base de datos: CLASE
Número de sistema: 000401734
ISSN: 1667-6726
Autors: 1
1
Institucions: 1Istituto di Ricerca sull'Impresa e lo Sviluppo, Roma, Lazio. Italia
Any:
Període: Nov
Volum: 15
Número: 2
Paginació: 287-320
País: Argentina
Idioma: Inglés
Tipo de documento: Artículo
Enfoque: Analítico, descriptivo
Resumen en inglés This paper applies different econometric methods to evaluate the effect of public subsidies on firms' R&D activity. For the sake of robustness, results from the Heckman selection model (Heckit), Control-function regression, Difference-in-differences, and various Matching methods are compared by using the third and fourth wave of the Italian Community Innovation Survey (CIS3, years 1998–2000 and CIS4, years 2002–2004). We predict the absence of a full crowding-out of private R&D performance, both for the whole sample and for some subsets of firms. Nevertheless, we conclude that while for variables expressed as ratio (R&D intensity and R&D per employee) the difference in results is negligible, R&D expenditure presents a strong variability among the approaches, even for those relying on similar identification assumptions. Given the utmost importance of this target-variable, future works should go beyond the use of single methods, especially when they are thought of to steer future policymaking
Disciplines Economía
Paraules clau: Econometría,
Italia,
Subsidios,
Empresas,
Innovación tecnológica,
Incentivos económicos,
Gasto público,
Investigación y desarrollo,
Investigación científica
Text complet: Texto completo (Ver PDF)