The impact of R&D subsidies on R&D employment composition

• Autores: Afcha Chávez, Sergio Moisés, García Quevedo, José
• Formato: documento de trabajo
• Fecha de Publicación: 2014
• Institución: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
• Repositorio: PUCP-Institucional
• Lenguaje: inglés
• OAI Identifier: oai:repositorio.pucp.edu.pe:20.500.14657/166775
• Enlace del recurso: https://repositorio.pucp.edu.pe/index/handle/123456789/166775; http://dx.doi.org/10.7835/ccwp-2014-11-0003
• Nivel de acceso: acceso abierto
• Materia: R&D subsidies; R&D employment; Matching estimators; Technology policy; http://purl.org/pe-repo/ocde/ford#5.02.04

In this paper we examine the impact of subsidies granted at national and regional levels on a set of R&D employment variables and, specifically, we seek to identify the existence of the behavioural additionality effects of these public subsidies on firms’ R&D human resources. We begin by assessing the effects of public funds on R&D private expenditures and on the number of R&D employees, and then focus on their impact on the composition of human resources engaged in R&D as classified by occupation and level of education. The data used correspond to the Spanish Technological Innovation Panel for the period 2006-2011. To control for selection bias and endogeneity, a combination of non-parametric matching techniques are implemented. After ruling out the existence of crowding out effects, our results show that R&D subsidies increase the number of R&D employees. However, no increase is found in the average level of qualification of R&D staff members in subsidized firms. All in all, the effects of public support are heterogeneous being dependent on the source of the subsidy and the firms’ characteristics.