We provide comparative evidence on R&D tax credit and subsidy programs by studying whether firms' participation in each program exhibits state dependence and whether cross program interactions exist and are significant. We use a panel of manufacturing Spanish firms, which could use both types of...

Previous work suggests that research and development (R&D) tax credits increase R&D expenditure. We exploit the staggered adoption of state-level R&D tax credits in the United States to examine their effect on innovation itself. In particular, we consider ten commonly-studied patent...

This paper evaluates the current focus of EU policy makers on small and medium-sized, young independent firms in high-tech sectors. Therefore, the effect of subsidies on both R&D input and R&D output is compared between independent high-tech young firms (NTBFs), independent low-tech young firms...

Governments purchase everything from airplanes to zucchini. This paper investigates the role of the technological content of government procurement in innovation. We theoretically show that a shift in the composition of public purchases toward high-tech products translates into higher...

According to theory, direct R&D grants should be used for projects with low private returns, high social returns and high risk. R&D tax credits, on the other hand, allow firms to choose projects freely according to their private returns. Building on the standard R&D capital model, I develop a...

This paper evaluates how R&D subsidies to the business sector are typically awarded. We identify two sources of ineffciency: the selection based on a ranking of individual projects, rather than complete allocations, and the failure to induce competition among applicants in order to extract and...

Empirical evidence suggests that positive externalities from R&D exceed negative ones. According to conventional wisdom, this calls for R&D subsidies. This paper develops a quality-ladder growth model with overlapping generations which evaluates the positive and normative implications of R&D...