Do Tax Incentives Increase Firm Innovation? An RD Design for R&D, Patents, and Spillovers
利用企业规模门槛变化实施断点回归，发现研发税收减免显著提升企业自身及技术邻近企业的专利和研发产出，效果持续七年，且主要由融资受限企业驱动。
We present causal evidence of R&D tax incentives’ positive impacts on a firm’s own innovation and that of its technological neighbors. Exploiting a change in size-based eligibility thresholds for R&D tax relief, we implement a Regression Discontinuity Design using administrative data. We find significant effects of tax relief on (quality-adjusted) patenting (and R&D) that persist up to seven years, and evidence of R&D spillovers on the innovation of technologically close firms. We can rule out elasticities of patenting with respect to R&D user cost of under 2 at the 5 percent level and show that our large effects are driven by financially constrained treated firms.