Finland told to better target R&D subsidies

Study says that innovation policy would be more efficient with clearer spending goals

Finnish R&D subsidies would have a greater impact if they were targeted towards businesses with high R&D productivity or innovation capacity, instead of allocating them uniformly, a study has claimed. 

The report—written by researchers at the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy ETLA and the VATT Institute for Economic Research, using company data from 2000 to 2016—compared policies that paid subsidies to all business regardless of their R&D activity levels with those that were allocated based on a company’s innovative capacity.