The effectiveness of innovation policy and the moderating role of market competition: Evidence from Latin American firms
J. M. Benavente & Pluvia Zuniga
#2021-025
The objective of this paper is to evaluate whether market competition
matters for the effectiveness of innovation policies. Using data for
Chilean and Peruvian manufacturing firms, we implement propensity
matching techniques combined with differences-in-differences estimation
to evaluate the impact of innovation subsidies on the post-treatment
innovation investment effort of firms and test whether such impact
differs according to the intensity of competition. We corroborate the
existence of "crowding-in" effects in beneficiaries when compared to a
control group of untreated firms. The subsidy impact is found either
only significant in highly competitive sectors or larger in more
competition-intensive industries -compared to low competition ones.
Thus, we confirm that market competition plays a moderating role in the
effectiveness of innovation policies to stimulate firm innovation
investment. The results are robust to different matching and estimation
methods. Our results therefore suggest that market contexts should be
considered in the design of innovation policies.
Keywords: Innovation Subsidies, Innovation Policy, Market Competition Latin American firms
JEL Classificiation: O38, O31, R38, H71