Public Demand-side Policies and Innovation

The dissertation will investigate the potential of governments' demand-side policies for stimulating innovation in the business sector. While technological policies such as R&D tax credits and R&D grants have received a lot of attention in the scholarly literature, demand side policies such as public procurement for innovation has not been studied intensely yet. So far, only Czarnitzki et al. (2020) have investigated the effect of this policy change on innovation in Germany. My dissertation will build on their results and will attempt to highlight benefits of the policy more broadly, analyze different variables, employ other more rigorous econometric methods and also investigates potential pitfalls of the policy, such as negative effects induced by higher procurement costs.