This study is an unprecedented effort in Brazil to evaluate the effectiveness of public incentive programs to develop technological capacity of firms. There are currently no empirical evaluations that have explored the impacts of this type of program on the performance of the Brazilian...

Public policies that promote R&D in firms are evaluated on a regular basis in developed countries. However, this type of study is relatively rare in developing countries.. In Brazil no impact evaluation analysis that use information at firms’ level has been published. The present study, which...

The paper surveys impact evaluations of government Technology Development Funds (TDF) in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Panama. All the evaluations were done at the recipient (firm) level using data from innovation surveys, industrial surveys, and administrative records of the granting units,...

This paper evaluates the impact of agricultural extension services in the Dominican Republic. In particular, we analyze the direct impact of the Program for Technological Support in the Agricultural Sector (PATCA). The analysis relies on a unique dataset gathered by PATCA’s executing unit in...

The paper investigates the relationship between government interventions to promote investments in innovation and firms-financed R&D. Merging a unique panel data set on Argentinean firms in the 1990s with a data base on different types of public support received through FONTAR program, we...

This paper analyzes the role of National Research Funds in promoting scientific production in emerging economies. The investigation focuses on the impact of the Chilean National Science and Technology Research Fund (FONDECYT). The analysis uses data drawn from international sources of...

In this paper we evaluate the impact of the provision of agricultural extension services to grape producers in Mendoza, Argentina, on yield and grape quality. Using fixed effects and matching techniques, we show that despite non-significant average treatment effects on yield, the program has...

In this paper, we analyzed the effectiveness of the Component 1 of the Livestock Pilot Project (LPP-1) in fostering the efficiency of the Uruguayan livestock producers. We found that the LPP-1 had an overall positive impact on the adoption of managerial practices, but it had not significant...

In this paper, we analyzed the effectiveness of a Chilean TDF, the FONTEC program. We found that FONTEC’s subsides partially crowded-out private investments in innovation and they more effectively promoted technological upgrades and process innovations, rather than radical product innovations....

This paper evaluates the impact of the Argentine SME support program PRE on employment, real wages, and exports. The program aimed at increasing the competitiveness of SMEs by co-financing up to fifty percent of expenditures in professional services and technical assistance. We use a unique...