IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mcm/deptwp/1999-11.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Subsidizing Public Inputs

Author

Listed:
  • Neil Buckley
  • Stuart Mestelman
  • Mohamed Shehata

Abstract

Investment in research and development may (with some probability) lead to reductions in a firm’s production cost. If the production-cost savings associated with successful research and development is freely disseminated to other firms as soon as it is realized, too few resources may be allocated to this input. In such an environment, subsidies to the public input can lead to optimal input use. Four alternative subsidy instruments are considered in this paper. Two are incremental subsidies and the others are conventional level subsidies. One of the incremental subsidies and one of the level subsidies crudely capture characteristics of incentive mechanisms used in the United States and Canada. A laboratory implementation of these instruments generally confirms that incremental subsidies are inferior to level subsidies.

Suggested Citation

  • Neil Buckley & Stuart Mestelman & Mohamed Shehata, 1999. "Subsidizing Public Inputs," Department of Economics Working Papers 1999-11, McMaster University.
    • Handle: RePEc:mcm:deptwp:1999-11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://socserv.socsci.mcmaster.ca/econ/rsrch/papers/archive/99-11.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jon Vilasuso & Mark R. Frascatore, 2000. "Public policy and R&D when research joint ventures are costly," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 33(3), pages 818-839, August.
    2. Offerman, Theo & Sonnemans, Joep & Schram, Arthur, 1996. "Value Orientations, Expectations and Voluntary Contributions in Public Goods," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(437), pages 817-845, July.
    3. Jeffrey I. Bernstein, 1996. "International R&D Spillovers between Industries in Canada and the United States, Social Rates of Return and Productivity Growth," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 29(s1), pages 463-467, April.
    4. Hughes, Edward & McFetridge, D. G., 1985. "A theoretical analysis of incremental investment incentives with an application to the case of industrial R & D," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 311-329, August.
    5. Glenn C. Loury, 1979. "Market Structure and Innovation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 93(3), pages 395-410.
    6. Davis, Jon & Quirmbach, Herman & Swenson, Charles, 1995. "Income Tax Subsidies and Research and Development Spending in a Competitive Economy: An Experimental Study," Staff General Research Papers Archive 5215, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    7. Isaac, R. Mark & Reynolds, Stanley S., 1992. "Schumpeterian competition in experimental markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 59-100, January.
    8. R. Mark Isaac & Stanley S. Reynolds, 1988. "Appropriability and Market Structure in a Stochastic Invention Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 103(4), pages 647-671.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Neil Buckley & Kenneth Chan & James Chowhan & Stuart Mestelman & Mohamed Shehata, 2001. "Value Orientations, Income and Displacement Effects, and Voluntary Contributions," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 4(2), pages 183-195, October.
    2. Timothy N. Cason & Lata Gangadharan, 2013. "Cooperation Spillovers And Price Competition In Experimental Markets," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(3), pages 1715-1730, July.
    3. Kanagaretnam, Kiridaran & Mestelman, Stuart & Nainar, Khalid & Shehata, Mohamed, 2009. "The impact of social value orientation and risk attitudes on trust and reciprocity," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 368-380, June.
    4. Kiridaran Kanagaretnam & Stuart Mestelman & Khalid Nainar & Mohamed Shehata, 2006. "Trust, Reciprocity and the Roles of Sex, Value Orientation and Risk Attitudes in an Investment Game," Department of Economics Working Papers 2006-04, McMaster University.
    5. Donja Darai & Jens Grosser & Nadja Trhal, 2009. "Patents versus Subsidies � A Laboratory Experiment," SOI - Working Papers 0905, Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich.
    6. Smith, John, 2009. "The endogenous nature of social preferences," MPRA Paper 16599, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. John Smith, 2012. "The endogenous nature of the measurement of social preferences," Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, Springer;Fondazione Rosselli, vol. 11(2), pages 235-256, December.
    8. Mohamed I. Gomaa & Stuart Mestelman & Mohamed Shehata, 2014. "Social Distance, Reputation, Risk Attitude, Value Orientation and Equity in Economic Exchanges," Department of Economics Working Papers 2014-07, McMaster University.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mcm:deptwp:1999-11. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/demcmca.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.