Essays on R&D subsidy policy

(eng) The impact of R&D subsidy policy provided with the contribution of the tax-payers is a key issue that has been thoroughly studied in the past. The last few years have been challenging for policy makers due to the global economic slowdown and the efficiency issue of such a policy has attracted further attention recently. In particular, R&D subsidies can be suitable because they might help enhancing the economic activity. They can also be suitable in order to foster the creation of knowledge and to correct market failures inherent to innovative activities. My dissertation studies to what extent R&D subsidies can affect the behavior of firms operating in a more integrated world. To this end, I focus on the Eureka program subsidizing cross-border research joint ventures in Europe. Chapters 1 and 2 analyze the effect of subsidies for such ventures on firm-level productivity and exports. Chapter 3, co-authored with Kaz Miyagawa, proposes a theoretical model on the free-riding problem with unobserved actions. This problem can emerge because a firm in a joint venture can be motivated to put less effort in research activity than its partners and to claim that its lack of results is linked to the uncertainty of research. The dissertation aims at contributing to the empirical literature on public intervention by giving new insights into the efficiency of R&D subsidies on firm performance. Interestingly, the subsidy effect appears to depend on initial productivity and the type of innovation. The dissertation also aims at contributing to the literature on the behavior of firms in research joint ventures by proposing a new way of solving the free-riding problem and by providing evidence from a sizable dataset on European ventures.