Project

The impact of the research tax credit

« The Impact of the research tax credit on R&D and innovation: evidence from French firms »

Motivation: The “Crédit impôt recherche (CIR)” is a research tax credit taking the form of tax exemptions provided to firms which increase spending in research and development (R&D). First introduced in France in 1983, the research tax credit has been reinforced by two reforms in 2004 and 2008. It is now the main source of public funding towards private research and development both in terms of number of firms covered and in terms of amount. Given the increasing importance of public spending devoted to sustain firm’s R&D investments, it is crucial to assess the efficiency of this scheme.

Project: The aim of this study is to develop an ex post evaluation of the successive reforms of the French research tax credit on firms’ R&D and innovation. The econometric analysis will rely on firm-level data from several sources (tax data, surveys on R&D spending and administrative data on the research tax credit). Methods of quasi-natural experiments will be used to assess the impact of the scheme and its change over time.

IPP researchers associated to this project : Antoine Bozio, Delphine Irac, Loriane Py.

Scientific Partners :

  • The French central bank (i.e. the Banque de France) is the partner of IPP for this project. In the Directorate of microeconomic and structural analysis of the General directorate of economics and international relations, the Structural policies research division is in charge of analysing structural reforms in France and in the Euro area and their impact on long-term growth. The theoretical and empirical studies carried out contribute to the thinking of the Eurosystem, especially regarding the consequences of tax and regulatory policies. The economists of the Structural policies research division involved in this project are Delphine Irac (chief of the research division), and Loriane Py.

Publication

Ce message est également disponible en : French