Public support to innovation: impact on technological efforts in Argentine manufacturing firms.

Following the evolutionist and neo-schumpeterian approach and the literature on additionality of innovation policy, this paper evaluates the impact of public funding to innovation on the intensity of the R&D expenditures and on the intensity of the employment in innovation. The analysis is based on recent evidence of Argentine manufacturing firms surveyed by ENDEI for 2010–2012 using Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method. The results show a positive impact on the intensity of the R&D effort of the supported firms in monetary terms, allowing us to reject the full crowding-out hypothesis. However, the positive monetary impact is not accompanied by a greater proportion of employment oriented to innovation activities, neither formal nor informal; so it is not possible to conclude that the analyzed policy translates into an improvement in the innovation competencies of the firms based on this indicator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]