Spillovers from publicly financed business R&D:: some empirical evidence from Germany

This paper investigates the effects of interindustry R&D spillovers from publicly financed business R&D on private R&D efforts and productivity using data of West German manufacturing industries. The results suggest that it is important to distinguish between the effects of spillovers from privately and publicly financed business R&D. In particular, estimation results provide evidence of productivity-enhancing effects of spillovers from privately financed R&D while results are less clear-cut for publicly financed R&D. Moreover, there is some empirical evidence that private R&D efforts of higher-technology industries are stimulated by spillovers from privately financed R&D but not by spillovers from publicly financed R&D. However, public funding of R&D in higher-technology industries seems to induce private R&D investments within these industries. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.