This article examines the effectiveness of the French cluster policy on R&D and innovation in terms of the economic performance of participating SMEs. Based on an original dataset, we built different measures of treatment and extended the DiD methodology to a multiple overlapping treatments approach. Joining a cluster’s association allows firms to benefit from low-cost animation actions and common services, while participating in R&D projects offers substantial financial support. Our findings indicate a complementarity between the two types of instruments since the policy is most effective when the two treatments are simultaneously used. Interestingly, they also show that belonging to a cluster alone induces much stronger positive impacts on R&D spending and on both the R&D and total employment of SMEs than participating in R&D collaborative projects alone. Therefore, to achieve its impact on SMEs, the cluster policy should not overlook low-cost instruments such as animation actions and common services, both as a standalone instrument and as an effective complement to subsidy policies for collaborative R&D projects.

中文翻译：

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激活集群还是补贴协作研发？评估法国集群政策影响的多重重叠处理方法

本文从参与的中小企业的经济表现角度考察了法国研发和创新集群政策的有效性。基于原始数据集，我们构建了不同的治疗措施，并将 DiD 方法扩展到多种重叠治疗方法。加入集群协会可以让公司从低成本的动画行动和公共服务中受益，同时参与研发项目提供大量资金支持。我们的研究结果表明这两种工具之间存在互补性，因为当同时使用两种治疗方法时该政策最有效。有趣的是，他们还表明，与参与研发相比，单独属于一个集群对研发支出以及对中小企业的研发和总就业产生更大的积极影响。D 单独的协作项目。因此，为了实现对中小企业的影响，集群政策不应忽视动画行动和公共服务等低成本工具，既可以作为独立工具，也可以作为合作研发项目补贴政策的有效补充。