UNU-MERIT Working Papers

Working Paper #2008-034

Wage effects of R&D tax incentives: Evidence from the Netherlands

Boris Lokshin & Pierre Mohnen #2008-034 PDF

This paper examines the impact of the Dutch R&D tax incentives program,
known as WBSO, on the wages of R&D workers. In our model these wages are
partly determined by the government’s WBSO tax disbursements. We
construct detailed firm- and time specific R&D tax credit rates as a
function of the R&D tax incentives scheme to capture the wage effects of
the government R&D support. An instrumentalvariables econometric model
is estimated using an unbalanced firm-level panel data covering the
period 1996-2004. After controlling for firm and industry effects and
business cycle fluctuations, R&D tax incentives are found to increase
R&D wages. The R&D wage effect of these incentives is smaller than their
effect on real R&D investment, but it is still sizeable. The elasticity
of the R&D wage with respect to the fraction of the wage supported by
the WBSO scheme is estimated at 0.1.

Keywords
  • price effect of tax incentives
  • tax credits
  • panel data model
  • R&D wages
JEL codes
  • O32
  • O38
  • H25
  • J30
  • C23
  • UNU-MERIT
  • Working
  • Papers
  • ISSN
  • 1871-9872

Cite this as

APA 7th ed.

Lokshin, B., & Mohnen, P. (2008). Wage effects of R&D tax incentives: Evidence from the Netherlands (UNU-MERIT Working Paper No. 2008-034). UNU-MERIT. https://unu-merit.nl/publications/working-papers/abstract/?id=3426

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