Public Policies towards the Financing of Innovative Activities

Abstract

The historical evidence presented in Chapter 5 and the empirical findings of Chapters 6 and 7 demonstrate that the features of financial institutions and the firm’s ability to overcome budget constraints are of great importance in fostering the formation of the diffusion cluster, which permits, through the assimilation of a new technological style, radical reform of the techno-economic subsystem. In this connection it is therefore possible to make a number of suggestions regarding the policy interventions most likely to favour investments in ‘D’-oriented R&D activities and which may directly and indirectly encourage the wide diffusion of new technological styles. These suggestions are intended to apply to those countries that take science and technology as a primary goal of public policy. If it is true that (as suggested in Section 5.3.5) the current period is one of transition from a downswing to an upswing in the periodisation of Kondratieff long waves, science and technology policy should today more than ever serve the purpose of promoting and facilitating those investments in high-tech activities that might shorten the transition from an exhausted to a new technological style.