The impact of public support on firm propensity to engage in R&D: Spanish experience

Abstract

Our objective is to estimate the effect of public low-interest loans for R&D projects on the probability of performing R&D by Spanish firms. The estimations provide evidence of the effectiveness of public low-interest loans, being the stimulus effect larger for SMEs than for large firms and also higher for manufacturing than for services. Supported firms are approxi-mately 25 percentage points more likely to self-finance their R&D investments than non-supported firms. The effect is quite relevant if we consider that the probability of self-financing R&D activities is 53.2 percentage points higher when the firm has invested in R&D activities in the previous year. This result suggests that firms can be induced persistently to perform R&D activities by means of loans.