Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/89628 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 4451
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
To what extent does a tax credit affect firms' R&D activity? What are the mechanisms? This paper examines the effect of R&D tax credits on firms' R&D expenditure by exploiting the variation across firms in the changes in the eligible tax credit rate between 2000 and 2003. Estimating the first-difference equation of the linear R&D model by panel GMM, we find the estimated coefficient of an interaction term between the eligible tax credit rate and the debt-to-asset ratio is positive and significant, indicating that the effect of tax credit is significantly larger for firms with relatively large outstanding debts. Conducting counterfactual experiments, we found that the aggregate R&D expenditure in 2003 would have been lower by 3.0-3.4 percent if there had been no tax credit reform in 2003, where 0.3-0.6 percent is attributable to the effect of financial constraint, and that the aggregate R&D expenditure would have been larger by 3.1-3.9 percent if there had been no cap on the amount of tax credits, where 0.3-0.8 percent is attributable to relaxing the financial constraint of firms with outstanding debts.
Subjects: 
R&D
tax credit
financial constraint
Japan
JEL: 
D22
H25
H32
K34
O31
O38
Document Type: 
Working Paper
Appears in Collections:

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.