Travail de recherche/Working paper
| Résumé : | While the benefits of innovative activities are universally acknowledged, current research on how and when governments should intervene to assist firms still has substantial knowledge gaps. In this paper, we consider two forms of government intervention, namely EUREKA network and cluster technological collaborative projects, and assess their impact on the performance of beneficiary firms over the period 2005-2015. The methodology implemented consists in comparing the beneficiaries of projects (which are typically R&D SMEs) with a similar control group, using the difference-in-differences estimation technique. We find that beneficiaries of both network and cluster projects have created on average more jobs and have increased their sales more than non-funded firms over the period of study. We also find that smaller R&D consortia (i.e. network projects) have a positive and greater influence in terms of commercialisation, whereas bigger consortia (i.e. cluster projects) have a positive and greater influence in terms of employment growth. In general, projects of shorter duration (i.e. from one to two years) are those showing the best outcomes compared to projects of longer duration (i.e. from three to seven years). |
