Knowledge and rent spillovers through government-sponsored R&D consortia

R&D consortia (collaborative R&D projects among private firms, universities, and public research institutes) have been attracting increasing attention as an effective means of promoting innovation. Especially for SMEs, such collaboration provides important opportunities to access and obtain advanced scientific knowledge generated by universities and public research institutes. It is expected that not only the participants in R&D consortia will enhance their performance, through direct knowledge spillovers, but also that the business partners of consortia members may enjoy indirect effects (rent spillovers), through their business transactions. This paper empirically examines the spillover effects through government-sponsored R&D consortia using firm-level data and the propensity score method. Focusing on a major support program for R&D consortia in Japan, the “Consortium R&D Project for Regional Revitalization” by METI, we confirm that there are both direct (knowledge) spillover effects from firms’ participation in this program and indirect (rent) spillover effects on the customer firms of the consortia members. Moreover, by comparing SMEs and large firms, we find that only SMEs obtain knowledge spillovers in R&D consortia, whereas, among their customers, only large firms enjoy rent spillovers.

Research Center for Interfirm Network, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

2013-01

English(eng)

technical report

VoR

44

近未来の課題解決を目指した実証的社会科学推進事業

Working Paper Series / Design of industry and financial network where sustained growth is enabled

https://hdl.handle.net/10086/25427