Public Funding and Innovation Strategies. Evidence from Italian SMEs

Using a dataset which combines Community Innovation Survey (CIS) and accounting information on Italian manufacturing firms, we adopt a two step econometric procedure to investigate whether the receipt of public funding determines firms' innovation strategy selection. In the first step an innovation selection equation is estimated, in the second we adopt a bivariate probit model. The main finding is that public funding influences whether firms select the make, the buy or the make&buy strategy, favoring the latter. The composite strategy is the one linked to the build up of absorptive capacity which, according to the empirical evidence, turns out to be associated to a better innovative performance.