Competencia, rentabilidad e innovación: estímulos a la I&D en México

Taking as point of departure the basics of the economics of innovation, the Mexican evidence builds on two major obstacles: market failures inhibit economic returns to R&D and, consequently, the inexistence of a national innovation system. In such context, fiscal subsidies to R&D are introduced with limited success. The fiscal subsidies remain highly concentrated in a few very large firms, in mature sectors that rest in minor product and process innovation efforts. Most of these firms are facing strong international competition, and their R&D response is in the form of their own internal engineering efforts. From a knowledge economy perspective these are very limited goals; rather, the new policy proposals should aim to promote systemic effects, including regional and knowledge based clusters, and not merely the firms subsidy. Of course, learning externalities elsewhere should be greatly valued.