Do Public Subsidies Complement Business R&D? A Meta‐Analysis of the Econometric Evidence

Summary Analysis of the effects of public financing on private investment in R & D has been the object of numerous applied studies without it having been possible to arrive at a definite conclusion. In this paper the results of a meta‐regression of econometric evidence on the relationship between public funding of R & D and private R & D expenditures is presented. After the creation of a data‐base including all relevant studies and their results and characteristics, a meta‐analysis was carried out to examine whether the characteristics of the applied analysis influence the results and explain the differences in the empirical literature on this subject.