Abstract

This paper examines the effects of innovation performance and government support schemes on cost efficiency of Vietnamese small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Financial and technical assistances are two different public instruments used to correct market failure and facilitate efficient innovation through lowering the research and development (R&D) expenditures. Although large and small firms innovate in different ways, so far limited empirical evidence has been reported with respect to the effectiveness of innovation activities and public instruments for SMEs. Using stochastic frontier approach to estimate firm efficiency scores, we find that firms with new product innovation are associated with higher efficiency, but firms with introduced actions of existing product improvement, technology innovation, and new product lines are unable to achieve a higher efficiency level compared to their counterparts. Furthermore, the results suggest that government financial assistances used alone or with technical assistances are neither able to help firms to improve efficiency, nor to reduce the cost of SMEs’ innovation activities. This suggests that public instruments may have limited usefulness for SMEs in Vietnam.

摘要

本文研究了创新绩效和政府支持计划对越南中小企业（SME）成本效率的影响。财政和技术援助是两种不同的公共工具，用于纠正市场失灵并通过降低研发（R&D）支出促进高效创新。尽管大企业和小企业的创新方式不同，但迄今为止，关于中小企业创新活动和公共工具有效性的实证证据有限。使用随机前沿方法来估计企业效率得分，我们发现具有新产品创新的企业与更高的效率相关，但引入现有产品改进、技术创新、与同类产品相比，新产品线无法达到更高的效率水平。此外，研究结果表明，单独使用政府财政援助或与技术援助相结合既不能帮助企业提高效率，也不能降低中小企业创新活动的成本。这表明公共工具对越南中小企业的用处可能有限。