IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nse/doctra/g2015-11.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The effect of public support on R&D employment in small firms

Author

Listed:
  • V. DORTET-BERNADET

    (Insee)

  • M. SICSIC

    (Insee)

Abstract

Between 2003 and 2010, total R&D public support (tax incentives and subsidies) targeted at SMEs increased by more than 300%: in 2010 it amounted to almost 2 billion euros, of which 26% (nearly 500 million euros) were perceived by very small businesses (fewer than 10 employees). This sharp increase is mainly explained by two reforms of the R&D tax credit (in 2004 and 2008) and a new public program dedicated to young innovative enterprises launched in 2004. An aggregate analysis shows that the share of R&D personnel financed by public funding has been multiplied by four for very small businesses, from 14% in 2003 to 49% in 2010. This change was accompanied by a decline of privately funded R&D personnel employed by very small businesses (and other SMEs to a lesser extent). An econometric analysis of a panel of small firms active in R&D intensive sectors tends to confirm this agregate finding at the firm level: R&D public support appears to have a positive impact on highly qualified and R&D employment but the impact on the associated labor costs appears to be significantly lower than the increase of the public financing, particularly from 2008.

Suggested Citation

  • V. Dortet-Bernadet & M. Sicsic, 2015. "The effect of public support on R&D employment in small firms," Documents de Travail de l'Insee - INSEE Working Papers g2015-11, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques.
    • Handle: RePEc:nse:doctra:g2015-11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bnsp.insee.fr/ark:/12148/bc6p06zrbpj/f1.pdf
    File Function: Document de travail de la DESE numéro G2015-11
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rufin Baghana & Pierre Mohnen, 2009. "Effectiveness of R&D Tax Incentives in Small and Large Enterprises in Québec," CIRANO Working Papers 2009s-01, CIRANO.
    2. Philippe Aghion & Philippe Askenazy & Nicolas Berman & Gilbert Cette & Laurent Eymard, 2012. "Credit Constraints And The Cyclicality Of R&D Investment: Evidence From France," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(5), pages 1001-1024, October.
    3. Lokshin, Boris & Mohnen, Pierre, 2013. "Do R&D tax incentives lead to higher wages for R&D workers? Evidence from The Netherlands," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 823-830.
    4. Michele Cincera & Reinhilde Veugelers, 2013. "Young leading innovators and the EU's R&D intensity gap," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(2), pages 177-198, March.
    5. Blundell, Richard & Bond, Stephen, 1998. "Initial conditions and moment restrictions in dynamic panel data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 115-143, August.
    6. Jacques Mairesse & Benoît Mulkay, 2011. "Evaluation de l'Impact du Crédit Impot Recherche," Working Papers 2011-35, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    7. Boris Lokshin & Pierre Mohnen, 2012. "How effective are level-based R&D tax credits? Evidence from the Netherlands," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(12), pages 1527-1538, April.
    8. Philippe Aghion & Philippe Askenazy & Nicolas Berman & Gilberte Cette & Laurent Eymard, 2012. "Credit Constraints and the Cyclicality of R&D Investment: Evidence from Micro Panel data," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-00754573, HAL.
    9. Rufin Baghana & Pierre Mohnen, 2009. "Effectiveness of R&D tax incentives in small and large enterprises in Québec," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 91-107, June.
    10. D. Audenaert & J. Bardaji & R. Lardeux & M. Orand & M. Sicsic, 2014. "Wage Resilience in France since the Great Recession," Documents de Travail de l'Insee - INSEE Working Papers g2014-11, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques.
    11. Ientile, Damien & Mairesse, Jacques, 2009. "A policy to boost R&D: Does the R&D tax credit work?," EIB Papers 6/2009, European Investment Bank, Economics Department.
    12. Isabel Busom & Beatriz Corchuelo & Ester Martínez-Ros, 2014. "Tax incentives… or subsidies for business R&D?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 571-596, October.
    13. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    14. Cédric Schneider & Reinhilde Veugelers, 2010. "On young highly innovative companies: why they matter and how (not) to policy support them," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 19(4), pages 969-1007, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vincent Dortet-Bernadet & Michaël Sicsic, 2017. "The effect of R&D subsidies and tax incentives on employment: an evaluation for small firms in France," Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE), issue 493, pages 5-22.
    2. Bettina Becker, 2013. "The Determinants of R&D Investment: A Survey of the Empirical Research," Discussion Paper Series 2013_09, Department of Economics, Loughborough University, revised Sep 2013.
    3. Elina Ladinska & Marielle Non & Bas Straathof, 2015. "More R&D with tax incentives? A meta-analysis," CPB Discussion Paper 309.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    4. Stéphane Goutte & David Guerreiro & Bilel Sanhaji & Sophie Saglio & Julien Chevallier, 2019. "International Financial Markets," Post-Print halshs-02183053, HAL.
    5. Crespi, Gustavo & Giuliodori, David & Giuliodori, Roberto & Rodriguez, Alejandro, 2016. "The effectiveness of tax incentives for R&D+i in developing countries: The case of Argentina," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(10), pages 2023-2035.
    6. Elina Ladinska & Marielle Non & Bas Straathof, 2015. "More R&D with tax incentives? A meta-analysis," CPB Discussion Paper 309, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    7. Alessandro Sterlacchini & Francesco Venturini, 2019. "R&D tax incentives in EU countries: does the impact vary with firm size?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 53(3), pages 687-708, October.
    8. Michele Cincera & Julien Ravet & Reinhilde Veugelers, 2014. "R&D Financing Constraints of Young and Old Innovation Leaders in the EU and the US," Working Papers TIMES² 2014-008, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    9. Andrés Rodríguez‐Pose & Roberto Ganau & Kristina Maslauskaite & Monica Brezzi, 2021. "Credit constraints, labor productivity, and the role of regional institutions: Evidence from manufacturing firms in Europe," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(2), pages 299-328, March.
    10. Sepehr Ghazinoory & Zahra Hashemi, 2023. "The Impact of Government Interventions on the Performance of Biotechnology, Information and Communications Technology, and Electrical and Electronics Firms: Evidence from Iran," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 14(2), pages 735-751, June.
    11. Théo Nicolas, 2019. "How Do Short-term Financial Constraints Affect SMEs’ Long-Term Investment: Evidence from the Working Capital Channel," Working papers 731, Banque de France.
    12. Michel Dumont, 2015. "Working Paper 05-15 - Evaluation of federal tax incentives for private R&D in Belgium: An update," Working Papers 1505, Federal Planning Bureau, Belgium.
    13. Dumont, Michel, 2022. "Public support to business research and development in Belgium: fourth evaluation," MPRA Paper 115418, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Castellacci, Fulvio & Lie, Christine Mee, 2015. "Do the effects of R&D tax credits vary across industries? A meta-regression analysis," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 819-832.
    15. Bettina Becker, 2015. "Public R&D Policies And Private R&D Investment: A Survey Of The Empirical Evidence," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(5), pages 917-942, December.
    16. Isabel Bodas Freitas & Fulvio Castellacci & Roberto Fontana & Franco Malerba & Andrea Vezzulli, 2015. "The additionality effects of R&D tax credits across sectors: A cross-country microeconometric analysis," Working Papers on Innovation Studies 20150424, Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo.
    17. Blandinieres, Florence & Steinbrenner, Daniela, 2021. "How does the evolution of R&D tax incentives schemes impact their effectiveness? Evidence from a meta-analysis," ZEW Discussion Papers 21-020, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    18. Montmartin, Benjamin & Herrera, Marcos, 2015. "Internal and external effects of R&D subsidies and fiscal incentives: Empirical evidence using spatial dynamic panel models," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(5), pages 1065-1079.
    19. OKAMURO, Hiroyuki & SAKUMA, Yohei, 2021. "The Effects of R&D Tax Incentive Reform on R&D Expenditures: The Case of 2009 Reform in Japan," TDB-CAREE Discussion Paper Series E-2021-04, Teikoku Databank Center for Advanced Empirical Research on Enterprise and Economy, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.
    20. Beck, Mathias & Junge, Martin & Kaiser, Ulrich, 2017. "Public Funding and Corporate Innovation," IZA Discussion Papers 11196, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    R&D tax credit; subsidies; public policy evaluation; difference-in-differences;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O38 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Government Policy
    • H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models

    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:nse:doctra:g2015-11. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 bibliographic 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.

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

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.