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How effective are R&D tax incentives? Reconciling micro and macro evidence

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  • Silvia Appelt
  • Matej Bajgar
  • Chiara Criscuolo
  • Fernando Galindo-Rueda

Abstract

Recent firm-level studies find R&D tax incentives to be much more effective at stimulating firms' R&D investment than what aggregate analyses indicate. Based on a distributed analysis of official R&D survey and administrative tax relief micro-data for 19 OECD countries, we show that two factors can reconcile these contrasting results. Firstly, a limited uptake of R&D tax incentives in most countries makes aggregate studies underestimate the effectiveness of R&D tax incentives. Secondly, R&D tax incentives are (much) less effective for large and R&D-intensive firms, which account for a small share of R&D-performing firms but most aggregate R&D tax relief, making firm-level studies overstate the aggregate effectiveness of R&D tax incentives.

Suggested Citation

  • Silvia Appelt & Matej Bajgar & Chiara Criscuolo & Fernando Galindo-Rueda, 2025. "How effective are R&D tax incentives? Reconciling micro and macro evidence," CEP Discussion Papers dp2071, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    • Handle: RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2071
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