Animate the cluster or subsidize collaborative R&D? A multiple overlapping treatments approach to assess the impacts of the French cluster policy
评估法国集群政策对中小企业经济绩效的影响，发现集群的动画行动和共同服务与研发补贴具有互补性，且仅加入集群对研发支出和就业的正面影响大于仅参与合作研发项目。
Abstract This article examines the effectiveness of the French cluster policy on R&D and innovation in terms of the economic performance of participating SMEs. Based on an original dataset, we built different measures of treatment and extended the DiD methodology to a multiple overlapping treatments approach. Joining a cluster’s association allows firms to benefit from low-cost animation actions and common services, while participating in R&D projects offers substantial financial support. Our findings indicate a complementarity between the two types of instruments since the policy is most effective when the two treatments are simultaneously used. Interestingly, they also show that belonging to a cluster alone induces much stronger positive impacts on R&D spending and on both the R&D and total employment of SMEs than participating in R&D collaborative projects alone. Therefore, to achieve its impact on SMEs, the cluster policy should not overlook low-cost instruments such as animation actions and common services, both as a standalone instrument and as an effective complement to subsidy policies for collaborative R&D projects.