Despite the increasing adoption of income-based tax incentives for R&D and innovation in the OECD area and beyond, evidence on the availability, design, generosity and actual cost of these incentives remains scarce. This report helps fill this gap by documenting government efforts to provide...

Many countries spend sizeable sums of public money on R&D grants to alleviate debt and equity gaps for small firms’ innovation projects. In making such awards, knowledgeable government officials may certify firms to private financiers. Using a unique Belgian dataset of 1107 approved requests...

There is a long-standing tradition in public research funding agencies of distributing funds via peer review, which aggregates evaluations of proposed research ideas from a group of external experts. Despite complaints that this process is biased against novel ideas, there is poor understanding...

Concern exists that public funding of science is increasingly risk averse. Funders have addressed this concern by soliciting the submission of high-risk research to either regular or specially designed programs. Little evidence, however, has been gathered to examine the extent to which such...

This paper discusses how to improve Canada’s business innovation in order to boost labour productivity and output growth. Many general framework conditions are highly favourable to business risk-taking and innovation, including macro stability, openness, strong human capital, low corporate tax...

Key indicators show Germany belonging to the countries in the OECD with strong innovation activity even though some weakening in Germany’s position relative to other OECD countries has occurred recently. While the redirection of resources towards unification-related spending as well as low...

Die Ausgaben für Forschung und Entwicklung von Wirtschaft und Staat sollen in der Europäischen Union entsprechend der Lissabon-Strategie auf 3% des Bruttoinlandsprodukts gesteigert werden. Deutschland hat das 3%-Ziel bisher nur knapp verfehlt. Aber haben diese Anstrengungen wirklich zu mehr...