- A-Z
- Jena Economic Resea...
- Volume 3
- R&D Subsidies to St...
- Autor(in)
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Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena. Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät
- Erschienen
- 14. April 2009
- Nummer des Discussion-Papers
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2009-027
- Schlagwort(e)
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policy evaluation
R&D subsidies
start-ups
- Zusammenfsg.
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The present paper investigates the effectiveness of R&D subsidies given to start-ups. Taking an aggregate view rather than evaluating a single program, we estimate the impact of R&D subsidies on start-ups’ employment growth and their patent output. A unique data set on start-ups in the East German county of Thuringia allows us to focus on those start-ups that conduct R&D within the first three business years. We conduct propensity score matching to address the selection bias between subsidized and non-subsidized start-ups. We find that R&D subsidies lead to an increase in employment growth of about 66%. Furthermore, subsidized start-ups show a 2.8 times higher patent output. These estimates provide evidence for the additionality of R&D subsidies within the first three business years. Moreover, our analysis points to the special group of academic spin-offs which excels in the novelty of business ideas and patent activity. For some of these high-tech start-ups, no non-subsidized counterparts can be found. This might be attributed to the policy focus on academic spin-offs, which has led to a successful targeting of R&D support schemes.
- article pub. typess JER
- Research article
- article languages JER
- Englisch
- article research fields JER
- entrepreneurship
- JEL-Classification for JER
- O38 - Government Policy ; L26 - Entrepreneurship ; H50 - General ; C14 - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods