Determinants of Firm's Innovation

Abstract

The primary aim of the paper is an analysis of the relationships between growth, innovation and subsidies based on a large firm-level data set in the period 2004-2007. The novelty of the approach lies in linking data from financial statements with data from innovation surveys of the Czech Statistical. Innovation activities of firms are modelled as a four stage model (CDM) which allows studying several interrelated questions while controlling for simultaneity and for causality problem. In the first two stages determinants of decision to innovate and consequent innovation investment are separated. In the third stage innovation input (R&D investment) is linked to innovation output, and finally, in the fourth stage it is determined how the productivity of firm is related to its innovation activities. Our analysis proved that innovation input significantly increases innovation output, with increasing firm's size, however, ceteris paribus, the innovation output is decreasing. This means that bigger firms are less efficient in transforming the innovation input into output. More importantly, our analysis shows that access to subsidies has significant, yet negative influence on innovation output. This result may throw a shadow on the efficiency of supported firms and have some implications for competition policy.