Abstract

Regional innovation policies have been implemented in several countries. In Japan, controlled decentralization of traditionally centralized innovation policy is ongoing, so that we can observe multilevel policy mix of public R&D (research and development) subsidies by national, prefecture, and city governments. However, empirical studies on multilevel R&D support using panel data and considering municipality level have been scarce. Based on original survey data and financial data of manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs), we estimate their total factor productivity (TFP) and empirically investigate the effects of public R&D subsidies by national, prefecture, and city governments. We employ firm-level fixed-effect panel estimation in order to control for the effects of any unobservable time-invariant factors. We find that multilevel subsidies (especially those involving city subsidies) complementarily and persistently increase recipients’ TFP. These results suggest significant advantages of multilevel policy mix, especially those involving city subsidies.

中文翻译：

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公共研发补贴多层次政策组合的影响：来自日本本土中小企业的经验证据

摘要

一些国家已经实施了区域创新政策。在日本，传统集中式创新政策的控制性分权正在进行中，因此我们可以观察到国家、县和市政府的公共研发（研究和开发）补贴的多层次政策组合。然而，使用面板数据并考虑市级水平的多层次研发支持的实证研究很少。基于制造业中小企业（SMEs）的原始调查数据和财务数据，我们估计了它们的全要素生产率（TFP），并实证研究了国家、地市政府公共研发补贴的影响。我们采用公司级别的固定效应面板估计来控制任何不可观察的时不变因素的影响。我们发现，多层次补贴（尤其是那些涉及城市补贴的补贴）互补且持续地提高了受援者的 TFP。这些结果表明多层次政策组合的显着优势，尤其是涉及城市补贴的政策组合。