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178Do Targeted R&D Grants toward SMEs

Increase Employment and Demand for High

Human Capital Workers?

Sven-Olov Daunfeldt, Daniel Halvarsson, Patrik Gustavsson Tingvall, and Alexander McKelvie

Abstract Most previous studies on the employment effects of government R&D grants targeting SMEs are characterized by data-, measurement-, and selection problems, making it difﬁcult to construct a relevant control group of ﬁrms that did not receive an R&D grant. We investigate the effects on employment and ﬁrm-level demand for high human capital workers of two Swedish programs targeted toward growth-oriented SMEs using Coarsened Exact Matching. Our most striking result is the absence of any statistically signiﬁcant effects. We ﬁnd no robust evidence that the targeted R&D grant programs had any positive and statistically signiﬁcant effects on the number of employees recruited into these SMEs, or that the grants are associated with an increase in the demand for high human capital workers. The lack of statistically signiﬁcant ﬁndings is troublesome considering that government support programs require a positive impact to cover the administrative costs associated with these programs.

Keywords Innovation policy · R&D grants · Statistical matching methods · High human capital · Firm growth · Outcome additionality

S.-O. Daunfeldt (*) Institute of Retail Economics, Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: sven-olov.daunfeldt@huiresearch.se D. Halvarsson The Ratio Institute, Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: daniel.halvarsson@ratio.se P. G. Tingvall Södertörn University, Södertörn, Sweden e-mail: Patrik.Tingvall@kommerskollegium.se A. McKelvie Whitman School of Management, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA e-mail: mckelvie@syr.edu