R&D employment effects of financial slack generated by R&D tax exemption: The importance of firm‐level contingencies
研究了比利时研发税收豁免产生的财务松弛如何影响企业的研发就业，发现这种正向效应在更老的企业和研发税收豁免占比适中的企业中更显著，对企业规模和研发强度无显著影响。
This paper focuses on R&D employment effects due to financial slack generated by an R&D tax exemption scheme in Belgium. The tax exemption is granted without firm‐level requirements, which facilitates testing firm‐level contingencies on the influence of the generated financial slack. We find that R&D employment effects increase with the level of the R&D tax exemption related to financial slack resources and that this positive relation is more outspoken for older firms and for firms with an intermediate share of R&D tax exemptions in the overall mix of R&D policy support. No effects are found for firm size and its R&D intensity. These findings suggest targeting the R&D tax exemption support according to firm characteristics to obtain longer term R&D employment effects. The focus on R&D employment adds to the literature on the evaluation of R&D policies which is largely oriented toward R&D expenditure and innovation outputs.