Technological policy and cooperation in innovationa look through a formal model

Resumen

Most of the empirical literature has shown that public support to firm R&D activities stimulates cooperation in innovation. However, there is not a formal model that studies the relationship between technological policy and R&D cooperation. We develop a principal-agent model from which we determine the structure of incentives that the principal �in our case the government responsible for the elaboration of technological policy programs- has to provide to the agents to stimulate R&D cooperation. Our results show that there is a certain level of incentives that foster cooperation in innovation. The main practical-policy implication of this result is that R&D public subsidies can trigger a behavioral change in the organization of firms´ R&D strategies and this will depend on the amount of such funding. The theoretical implication is that a new methodology �principal-agent model- may provide a useful framework for analyzing the effect of technological policy on (cooperation in) innovation.