Employment growth from public support of innovation in small firms

Abstract

We investigate the impacts of the U.S. publicly-funded Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program’s funding on the overall employment growth of SBIR-award recipient firms. This paper is motivated by the U.S. Congress’ continued emphasis of employment growth during its deliberations on the reauthorization of the SBIR program. We set forth a model of employment growth; the model offers a framework through which we can compare the firm’s actual level of employment after receipt of an SBIR award and completion of the research project to the level of employment predicted by the firm’s characteristics prior to the award. Using data collected by the National Research Council within the National Academies, we estimate our model, and we conclude that, on average, the overall employment effects associated with the SBIR program are large absolutely and relative to dollars of funding, but these effects are, in general, not statistically significant.