A Study on the Performance of Complex Government R&D Support in Innovative SMEs

Korean SMEs are constantly striving to increase corporate and international competitiveness through continuous product and service innovation in the era of global crisis. In this situation, governments such as the Ministry of SMEs and Startups have also continuously promoted support for innovation of SMEs and strengthening international competitiveness. R&D is emphasized as the most representative means of policy support. It is important to secure financial resources for SMEs' R&D. Therefore, this study aims to examine the effect of a complex policy combination that simultaneously considers R&D subsidies, R&D tax cuts, and R&D loan support in terms of financing R&D of SMEs. As a research method to investigate this, the corporate performance according to the government's complex R&D support method was analyzed through a survey and financial data(2011-2022) targeting 3,000 SMEs with high technology levels. As a result of the analysis, government R&D subsidies have a positive (+) effect on R&D expenses of companies, R&D tax reduction has a positive (+) effect on sales, operating profit and net profit, and R&D loan support has a positive (+) effect only on operating profit. Companies that received all three complex policy combinations, R&D subsidies, R&D tax cuts, and R&D loan support, showed a positive (+) effect in net income, and the combination of R&D tax reduction and R&D loan support showed a positive (+) effect in operating profit and net income. On the other hand, companies that received R&D subsidies and R&D loan support at the same time showed a decrease in sales. The implications of the analysis results are that the company's performance is greater in the support of the policy combination method than the effect of single support. Policy suggestions were made accordingly.