رفتار Freerider و دارایی های عمومی از فعالیت های R & D در شرکت: مورد اسپانیایی اعتبارات کم بهره برای R & D

This paper analyses the freeriding behaviour in the case of public finance for R&D activities in enterprises. It will start with a brief discussion about the concept of freeriding and its importance to justify public support measures and offers a review of the methods, indicators and results reflected in the evaluation studies. In the second part of the paper, the impact of the Spanish low interest credits for R&D projects for individual firms will be analysed. A profile of the “freerider firms” will be offered, defined as those supported firms whose innovative efforts do not depend on public aid and probably would or could have carried out the same level of innovative activities without public support. Moreover, the paper presents some evidence that firms with a freerider behaviour show a lower level of goal achievement related to their technical and commercial objectives and consider the learning effects as less important than the other firms. This could suggest, indirectly, that freeriders generate fewer externalities available for the production system as a whole—than the non-freerider firms.

The question of the role of governmental intervention in economical and industrial development is the subject of a continuous discussion in modern economic theory. Ever since the beginning of industrialisation, there has been broad support for non-interventionism, laissez-faire (Smith, 1776) and also for an active role for public forces to ensure a fast process of industrialisation, e.g. economic development (Hamilton, 1791 and List, 1846). The most well-known theories that analyse the justification of technology policies are: the neo-classical one (based on market failures), the new growth theories1 and the evolutionary perspective.2 Most of this literature justifies such public intervention but fails to offer clear solutions about the design of these policies or how their effectiveness should be evaluated. Moreover, the conversion of these theoretical arguments into useful measurable indicators is still one of the main problems in the practice of evaluation studies. This paper analyses the freeriding behaviour of the enterprises that obtained public finance for their R&D activities. Section 2 offers a brief discussion about the concept of freeriding and financial additionality and its importance to justify public support measurements. The Section 3 offers a review of the methods, indicators and results reflected in the evaluation studies. In the second part of the paper (Section 4), the impact of the Spanish low interest credits for R&D projects for individual firms will be analysed. A profile of the “freerider firms” will be offered, defined as those supported firms whose innovative efforts do not depend on public aid and probably would or could have carried out the same innovative activities without public support. Freerider behaviour is frequently analysed however most studies do not offer a broad analysis of the type of firms with a freerider attitude. The main objective of this section therefore, is not to find the exact level of freeriding, but to identify the characteristics of the firms that tend to indulge most frequently in freerider behaviour and to offer some evidence useful for the public authorities to reduce the level of freeriding. Moreover, the paper presents some evidence that freeriding seems to generate a lower level of externalities (based on an indirect indicator: the goal achievement of the technological and commercial objectives) available for the production system as a whole than the non-freerider firms.

This article sets out with a brief review of the role of additionality to justify the technology policy and presents the main results of some existing evaluation studies, followed by an analysis of the CDTI support schemes. The main purpose is to identify the type of firms with an above-average level of freeriding. Accordingly, it relates the statistical results of three different and complementary indicators and those of the combined overall indicator. The first important conclusion is that the profiles of the freerider firms are somewhat different for each of the three indicators used. This fact justifies the use—and the need—to work with several indicators and to convert them in a combined overall indicator. As already discussed, the use of surveys to detect freerider behaviour is not free of methodological problems due to the fact that firms exaggerate the importance of the public support measurements. Case studies or face to face interviews would generate better results (Meyer-Krahmer, 1989 and Becher et al., 198917), though they are very expensive to undertake for large samples. Therefore, the combined indicator, used in this paper is important to control the answers of the firm, because they have to overstate at least threefold the importance of the support. The level of firms with a freerider attitude—34%—can not be compared with other studies because none of them present such combined variables. The comparison of the results of the individual indicators with those observed in the case studies (taken from Heijs, 2001) demonstrates that the number of CDTI firms with a substitute effect (16%) does not diverge much from of the results reflected in other studies. The percentage of CDTI firms with alternative financial sources (20%) is lower than the figures detected in the German studies. This can possibly be explained, partially, by the fact that the German financial system is probably more used to dealing with the finance of R&D with a high-risk level than the Spanish one. A second important conclusion is that the identification of the firms with a relatively high or low level of freerider attitude shows us that the differences are very small. Except for some variables the differences obtained by the association tests were very small and the results of the logistic regression models, based on a more comprehensive method, were not very strong. One of the reasons that we did not find clear profiles could be the fact that a number of freerider firms do not admit their behaviour, so the sample firms considered as non-freeriders are polluted, though it is also possible that there are no clear differences. However, the main conclusions of the paper are confirmed by both methodological approaches and the differences in the results obtained seem to be logical and can always be explained or interpreted.18 The differences between freeriders and the other firms seem to be based essentially on three indicators: the size and the innovative level of the firm and the type of R&D financed by public funds. The identification of the firms with a relatively high level of freerider attitude was aimed at the improvement of the policy implementation. It should offer the CDTI, or other public policy agencies, data to establish requirements, criteria or priorities to improve the selection mechanism used for the evaluation of the projects. The analysis, however, offered hardly any results that can be converted into clearly defined requirements, applicable in the practice of project evaluation and that can be defended politically. Moreover, it has to be questioned to what extent freeriding may well be tolerated due to the costs of reducing—or completely eliminating—freeriding. The only variable directly convertible into a practical requisite for obtaining credits could be the size of the firm. The results indicate that almost 32% of the SMEs do not consider public support as important for their innovative activities. Conversely, for the larger firms this percentage went up to almost 53%. On the one hand, it could be concluded that the CDTI should restrict the participation of the large firms but, on the other hand, it should not be forgotten that over 47% of the large firms indicate that their R&D effort depends on the public support mechanism. To solve this problem the CDTI could require from the large firms a higher interest rate, closer to the market. In this way they do not exclude large firms from the programmes but at the same time freerider attitude will be reduced. Other variables related to the different indicators for freerider attitude are not convertible requirements useful in the practice of policymaking, for example, it does not seem reasonable to exclude firms with a low level of R&D expenditures by sales or those that consider R&D as unimportant. These variables though, can serve to revise or improve the internal process of project evaluation carried out by the public agencies. Although it could be expensive to change the selection process in order to eliminate or reduce freeriding behaviour, the conclusion from this paper is that, in the case of low interest credits for R&D projects in enterprises—being a general non-selective instrument—the support of firms with a freerider attitude should be avoided. It was pointed out that the freeriders not only do not need public support to maintain their R&D activities, but the data of the CDTI/IAIF questionnaire demonstrates that the firms with a freerider attitude had a lower level of goal achievement in relation to the technical and commercial objectives of the supported projects. Apart from this fact, those firms also indicate a lower generic impact in relation to the effects on the improvement of their innovative culture or their innovative capabilities (the learning effects). This means that the possible generation of externalities by the freerider firms, necessary to improve the social welfare, is not assured. Anyhow, this paper should be considered as only an attempt to deal with the problem of additionality in a strict or broad sense and further research is necessary.