Abstract Public R&D grants are widely used to support innovation in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which often face financial and managerial constraints. This paper examines how grant size affects SME innovative performance using evidence from PIPE, a long-running program in São Paulo, Brazil. Using firm-level panel data (1999–2019), we compare funded and non-funded applicants from the same calls using a doubly robust Difference-in-Differences estimator and an event-study design. We then assess treatment intensity through a dose–response framework. Results show that receiving a grant increases patenting within 3 years, with no evidence of differential pre-treatment trends. Dose–response estimates reveal a non-linear relationship: marginal returns rise with grant size up to an intermediate range and decline at higher levels of support. The findings highlight the importance of accounting for treatment intensity in the evaluation of SME-oriented R&D support programs.
García et al. (Wed,) studied this question.