Public support has always played a key role in shaping the extent, nature and direction of innovation in modern market economies. Understanding how government support for innovation compares internationally in its design, cost and impacts is a key policy priority, particularly at current times of crisis. The OECD project MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS OF BUSINESS INNOVATION GOVERNMENT SUPPORT POLICIES (MABIS), implemented from April 2020 until March 2023, has pursued the following strategic objectives:
1. Ensure the continued collection and dissemination over three more years, in a more efficient and user-oriented fashion, of information and statistical indicators on the design and cost of tax incentives for R&D inputs across the entire OECD and EU membership, also incorporating key partner economies
2. Extend the statistical measurement of government support for innovation to a more comprehensive set of policy instruments, outside the scope or insufficiently captured by available data and statistics, pursuing greater integration of country-level data with the STIP Compass infrastructure
3. Extend the distributed microdata analysis approach to encompass the impact analysis of a more comprehensive set of potential outcomes of R&D tax incentives and other innovation policies.
4. Foster knowledge sharing on the use, design, implementation and analysis of impact of a broader range of R&D and innovation support policies
5. Support the coherent delivery of business R&D support policies and R&D statistics within and across countries by promoting the efficient use of common and state of the art definitions and standards.
The project has effectively ensured the collection and dissemination of indicators and policy information on R&D tax incentives over three reporting cycles, 2020/21, 2021/2 and 2022/3, with the implementation and launch of the new INNOTAX portal on R&D tax incentives, made available to users in March 2023, representing a key project highlight given its visibility.
MABIS has extended the measurement of R&D and innovation tax incentives, consolidating the measurement of tax incentives linked to the outcome of R&D and innovation-based activities. Furthermore, the implementation of mapping pilots on the full scale of government support for innovation has demonstrated the possibilities of measurement across countries as a potential basis for a stable data infrastructure addressing a major evidence gap.
Building on the foundations for the extended impact analysis put in place throughout the first reporting period, the distributed microdata analysis work has not only extended the analysis of input additionality to provide additional insights on policy design issues, but also provided new evidence on output additionality and spillovers.
The project activities, including several debates and briefing sessions it has facilitated, have enabled several technical and policy discussions oriented towards reforms of policy, administration and monitoring of support.
The activities and outputs of the MABIS project have assisted several OECD country studies while also helping inform EU assessments. Key indicators from this project have been selected among the few included in the Key Issues Paper of the 2023 OECD Ministerial Council Meeting. Evidence on R&D tax incentives is frequently cited in national policy literature as pieces of evidence in support of reforms, while also informed significant statistical improvements within countries. The availability of the new portal provides a streamlined source of information for policymakers interested in the reform of policy instruments and learning from the experiences of their peers.
