The effects of government subsidies on business R&D employment: Evidence from oecd countries

Abstract

Existing evidence suggests that government subsidies stimulate business R&D expenditure. However, most studies fail to address the possibility that part of the observed increase in expenditure may be due to higher R&D wages. We consider the impact of different government subsidies on R&D workers in 25 OECD countries and find that the short run tax-price elasticity of R&D employment is marginally higher than existing estimates of the elasticity of expenditure with respect to the tax price of both labor and capital combined. We conclude that there is no evidence to indicate that wage inflation has seriously conflated past estimates of the effectiveness of government R&D subsidies.