How Should Place-based R&D Support Be Designed and Implemented? Evidence from a Firm Survey in Japan

Junichi Nishimura and Hiroyuki Okamuro

No HIAS-E-159, Discussion paper series from Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University

Abstract: With the progress of decentralization of policymaking since the 2000s, local innovation ecosystems have attracted worldwide attention. This study examines whether R&D support provided by diverse policy agents within a local ecosystem enhances firm innovation performance. We pay special attention to 1) a multilevel policy mix of national/prefectural and city governments, 2) a policy instrument mix of hard (financing) and soft (non-financing) support, and 3) a public-private partnership of governments and local supporters. Our estimation results based on an original firm-level survey show that R&D support from city governments, particularly soft support such as networking, advice and consultation, significantly contributes to firm innovation performance. Local supporters’ R&D support also positively impacts performance. We find significant complementarity between R&D support from city governments and local supporters. In contrast, national/prefectural R&D support shows no significant effects, and we observe no significant complementarity regarding multilevel or policy instrument mixes. We confirm that the qualitative findings from our interviews with local government officials and firms are consistent with our quantitative findings.

Keywords: R&D support; place-based policy; policy mix; multilevel governance; innovation ecosystem; city (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2026-03-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cse, nep-ent and nep-sbm
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