IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rseval/v22y2013i5p298-306.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Beyond surveys: The research frontier moves to the use of administrative data to evaluate R&D grants

Author

Listed:
  • Michele Morris
  • Oliver J. Herrmann

Abstract

Evaluation has relied on survey data sources. Different fields of social sciences (political science, sociology, and economics) were revolutionized using modern survey methods and techniques for analysing these data. However, the research frontier moves to the use of administrative data. Administrative data are highly preferable to survey data because (1) full population files are generally available and offer much larger sample sizes, (2) administrative data have a longitudinal structure that enables evaluators to follow individuals over time and address many critical policy questions, (3) administrative data do not suffer from high rates of non-response, attrition, and under-reporting. This article presents results from an evaluation of publicly funded R&D assistance provided to New Zealand firms. The grants are intended to lead to additional R&D undertaken by the firm, which in turn is expected to increase the economic performance of a firm. We use the Statistics New Zealand prototype Longitudinal Business Database (LBD), which contains high quality and comprehensive administrative firm-level data. The problem of evaluation is that while the programmes' impact can truly be assessed only by comparing actual and counterfactual outcomes, the counterfactual is not observed. So the challenge of an evaluation is to create a convincing and reasonable comparison group for assisted firms in light of this 'missing data'. Our methodology involves matching firms that received assistance to comparable unassisted firms based on firm characteristics. We then compare changes in performances of the assisted group with the group of matched unassisted firms. Copyright The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Michele Morris & Oliver J. Herrmann, 2013. "Beyond surveys: The research frontier moves to the use of administrative data to evaluate R&D grants," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 22(5), pages 298-306, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rseval:v:22:y:2013:i:5:p:298-306
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/reseval/rvt020
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Riccardo Crescenzi & Guido de Blasio & Mara Giua, 2020. "Cohesion Policy incentives for collaborative industrial research: evaluation of a Smart Specialisation forerunner programme," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(10), pages 1341-1353, October.
    2. Martin Thomas Falk & Roger Svensson, 0. "Evaluation criteria versus firm characteristics as determinants of public R&D funding," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 47(4), pages 525-535.
    3. Koniewski, Maciej & Krupnik, Seweryn & Skórska, Paulina, 2024. "Beyond the average effect of the innovation subsidies: Using case selection via matching to break impasse in delivering useful advice to policy makers," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:rseval:v:22:y:2013:i:5:p:298-306. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/rev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.