Defense financing of private R&D: evidences from French firms
Résumé
This paper focuses on the public financing of private R&D. In France, this type of finance is mainly in the form of defense subsidies. This study brings empirical evidence on the open question of the effects of the public subsidies on private research, through analysing firms that receive R&D subsidies from the French Ministry for Defense. The paper builds different samples of firms from the available R&D and innovation surveys and evidences that the links with Defense have consequences on technological performance. Precisely, it shows that the firms benefiting from R&D subsidies exhibit a higher propensity to innovate.