Ricerc@Sapienza

This paper presents a second-generation schumpeterian growth model to investigate the existence of possible links between firm's size, competition stiffness and the effectiveness of R&D policy. In the model, the step size of innovation is randomly drawn from a Pareto distribution, and firms are heterogeneous in terms of market power. The paper finds that the optimal R&D policy is to subsidise R&D and not to tax it, and that more intense competition

This paper presents an agent-based micro-policy simulation model assessing public R&D policy effect when R&D and non-R&D performing companies are located within a network. We set out by illustrating the behavioural structure and the computational logic of the proposed model; then, we provide a simulation experiment where the pattern of the total level of R&D activated by a fixed amount of public support is analysed as function of companies’ network topology.