The Effect of Government R&D Subsidies on SMEs

• Main Authors: Chien-Wen Huang, 黃仟文
• Other Authors: Pin-Yu Chu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/60344445606746059437

博士 === 國立中山大學 === 公共事務管理研究所 === 98 === Innovation policy (science & technology policy/program) aims to stimulate industrial innovation and address the gap between ideas and the market for new products/process. Hence, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are an important target group for innovation policy. While SMEs play important economic role in Taiwan, it is more meaningful to evaluate related innovation policies, to understand the impact of polices as well as test theoretical models of interactions between the public and private sectors. This topic is significant but little studied or investigated with the chance of bias. From the perspective of program evaluation, the thesis evaluated the effect of government subsidies on SMEs’ innovation including impact assessment and efficiency assessment and took the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program as an example. The target population for evaluation covered three groups: SBIR awardees, firms with rejected applications, general SME manufacturers. Questionnaires were delivered to 942 firms with SBIR Phase I or Phase II awards and 222 firms with rejected applications between 1999 and 2004; 374 and 36 valid questionnaires were returned separately. The Department of Statistics of the Ministry of Economic Affairs provided the data of general SMEs. This thesis evaluated the impact of SBIR by a quasi-experimental design and examines the efficiency by an econometric model. Main findings are as follows: A. The impact of government R&D subsidies on SMEs: 1. Innovative activity (R&D spending): Compared to other SMEs (firms with rejected applications or general SME manufacturers), the growth of SBIR awardees’ R&D spending is significant. 2. Productivity (employment or sales): Compared to other SMEs (firms with rejected applications or general SME manufacturers), the growth of SBIR awardees’ employment is significant. Compared to general SME manufacturers, the growth of SBIR awardees’ sales is significant; but compared to firms with rejected applications, the growth of SBIR awardees’ sales is not significant. B. The efficiency of government R&D subsidies on SMEs: 1. Innovative activity (R&D spending): On average, 0.28 percentage change in SBIR awardees’ R&D spending is correlated with 1 percent change in subsidies (elasticity relationship). 2. Productivity (employment or sales): On average, 0.08 percentage change in SBIR awardees’ employment and 0.25 percentage change in SBIR awardees sales is separately correlated with 1 percent change in subsidies (elasticity relationship).