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ARE SUBSIDIES TO BUSINESS R&D EFFECTIVE? REGRESSION
DISCONTINUITY EVIDENCE FROM THE TA CR ALFA PROGRAMME IDEA 2023
3. TA CR internal information system – ALFA programme data on evaluation points and ranking of proposals, information on whether a proposal was recommended for funding, whether a proposal was supported, and the composition of a proposal consortium (TA CR, 2017).8
The datasets were merged at the micro level using the unique taxpayer identification number (IČO), which is standardized at the national level and allows unequivocal identification of each organization. The database provides longitudinal panel data over the period 2007–2021, which allows us to look back three years before the first call of the programme (t-2) was announced and forward three years after the end of funding of projects in the last call (d+3).
In addition to business enterprises, as noted above, the ALFA programme subsidised research organizations as members of project consortia, including universities, as well as various state-owned and/or state-funded organizations, and in a few cases, individuals. However, the question of the subsidies’ additionality effects is most relevant to profit- oriented private businesses that operate in competitive markets and face hard credit constraints. Hence, we exclude from the sample:
1. Higher education institutions and research organizations that conduct primarily non-business activities, according to the lists by MSMT (2016) and RVVI (2016).
2. Public non-financial corporations, according to the classification by Institutional Sectors and Subsectors (CISS) in the business register of the CZSO (2022).
3. Other organizations with out-of-scope legal forms, according to the business register of the CZSO (2022), such as state-funded institutions, state enterprises, associations, sole proprietors, and others.
The resulting estimation sample includes 449 business enterprises with the following legal forms:
1. Private limited company.
2. Limited partnership.
3. Joint-stock company.
4. Cooperative.
8 Since approximately 2013 (the timing varies slightly depending on programme), the TA CR has been publishing rankings of funded and non-funded project proposals on its website. For the present research, the TA CR also provided other related administrative data, in particular, the exact score received by each project (only rankings are published).
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