Innovation incentive policies in Brazil: some performance indicators

• Grant number: 18/06548-1
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Visiting Researcher Grant - Brazil
• Start date: July 01, 2018
• End date: June 30, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Economics - Industrial Economics
• Principal Investigator: Ana Elisa Périco
• Grantee: Ana Elisa Périco
• Visiting researcher: Mario Luiz Possas
• Visiting researcher institution: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Instituto de Economia, Brazil
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Most studies on technological capability building in Brazil have focused on the supply side, mainly on specialized labour and R&D incentives. However, understanding the reasons behind Brazilian industry low technological drive requires to assess also the demand for public funds supporting innovative efforts, especially concerning private firms, In recente years public programs have been designed to foster private firms innovative activities, with such instruments as subventions and fiscal incentives. Recent studies have found serious and spread distortions in innovation performance figures for Brazilian firms, since PINTEC/IBGE data exhibit disproportional weight in machinery and equipment acquisitions as part of (ex ante) innovative effort, which translates into a strong bias for (ex post) process innovations - since "innovations only for the firm" are officially considered as innovations - as compared with product innovations. On the same database as the former part of this research project, centered on PINTEC, we intend to assess the extent to which some innovation support policies to the firms caught by such data may contribute to this bias, which reflects in (i) low international comparability of these data; (ii) strong difficulty to evaluate firms' innovative performance; and (iii) low reliability of assessing the effectiveness of these policies. (AU)