L’impact du CIR sur les personnels de la recherche

This paper surveys the literature on the impact of the French research tax credit on scientists, engineers and other R&D personnel. After reviewing the effect of this subsidy on the user cost of R&D capital, we compare the results of several econometric evaluations of its effectiveness. They reveal, among other things, that the research tax credit corrects discrimination in the hiring of PhD scientists, but with a windfall effect for PhD-engineers. In very small businesses, R&D employment aid (R&D tax credit inclusive) acts to the detriment of unaided employment. Finally, with only 2.5% of R&D activities outsourced to public research bodies, there is no visible effect on their personnel. Given that most R&D expenditures represent staff salaries, these results support previous evidence that research tax incentive has a moderate effect on aggregated R&D in France. They also question changes from the original intent of policy makers when the research tax credit was created in 1983: to remedy for failures in the market for knowledge, not to subsidize highly qualified labour costs as a tool for competitiveness, alongside cuts in employers’ social security contributions on less-skilled labor. The paper concludes with a discussion of the relevance of recent reforms.