What Types of Start-ups Receive Funding from the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program? Evidence from the Kauffman Firm Survey

This paper integrates the Kauffman Firm Survey with the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) recipient dataset to examine in more depth the characteristics of small business start-ups that received R&D subsidy from SBIR. Our selection analysis first shows that SBIR program funds are distributed disproportionately to start-ups whose owner has a post-graduate education. The odds of being granted SBIR R&D subsidies are also higher for those who had prior R&D experience and owned patents at the start of their business operations. Start-ups that are operating in the high-technology sector are also more likely to receive SBIR funds than start-ups in traditional sectors. Surprisingly, start-ups that did not sell goods and services are more likely to receive SBIR grants. Interestingly, location matters but at a different direction: start-ups located in states that are not known for their R&D performance are more likely to receive SBIR funding

Support for Gay and Lesbian Rights: How and Why the South Differs from the Rest of the Country

The South provides far fewer legal protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans than does the rest of the country. Because state gay rights policies strongly reflect public opinion, trends in and the causes of Southerners’ stronger opposition to homosexuality and gay rights are key to the future of lesbian and gay rights in the region. Using data for over 200,000 respondents to over 150 surveys, we assess the width, stability, and roots of Southern differences in beliefs about whether homosexual sex should be legal, schools should employ lesbian and gay teachers, same-sex marriage should be legal, and homosexual relations are “not wrong at all.” We find strong and stable regional divergences that owe much to Southerners’ greater religiosity, conservatism, and Republican party identification and their higher probabilities of being evangelical Protestants and African Americans. Migration patterns seem to maintain rather than to narrow or widen regional differences on gay rights

Public financing of risky early-stage technology

This dissertation examines the role of public investments in inducing small firms to develop risky, early-stage technologies. It contributes to expanding our understanding of the consequences of research, innovation, and entrepreneurship policies and programs by investigating in more depth the effect of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program on the innovation effort, ability to attract external capital, and other metrics of post-entry performance of small business start-ups using a new sample and estimation approach. Unlike prior R&D subsidy studies that concentrated almost exclusively on European countries, this dissertation focused on small business start-ups in the United States using a new scientific survey of new firms. It integrated the Kauffman Firm Survey (KFS) from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation with the SBIR recipient dataset from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and used advances in statistical matching to achieve better comparability between the treated and control groups of small business start-ups. The integrated KFS-SBA dataset, which contains both recipient and non-recipient small firms, and statistical matching allowed us to empirically construct the counterfactual outcomes of SBIR recipients. This dissertation balanced the pre-treatment characteristics of SBIR recipients and non-recipients through propensity score matching (PSM). It constructed the comparison sample by identifying non-recipients with nearly identical propensity scores as those of SBIR recipients. Consistent with the propensity score theorem, observations with the same distribution of propensity scores have the same distribution of observable characteristics. PSM made the comparison and treatment samples homogenous except in SBIR program exposure, making the fundamental assumption of ignorability of treatment assignment more plausible. Using the realized outcomes of observationally similar non-recipient start-ups as the counterfactual outcomes of SBIR recipients, we found empirical evidence of the input additionality effect of the SBIR program. Had they not applied for and granted SBIR R&D subsidies, recipient start-ups would have spent only 185,000 in R&D, but with SBIR their R&D effort was significantly increased to 663,000, on average. The treatment effects analyses also found a significant positive effect of SBIR on innovation propensity and employment. However, it appears that public co-financing of commercial R&D has crowded-out privately financed R&D of small business start-ups in the United States. A dollar of SBIR subsidy decreased firm-financed R&D by about $0.16. Contrary to prior SBIR studies, we did not find any significant "halo effect" or "certification effect" of receiving an SBIR award on attracting external capital. However, we discovered a different certification effect of the SBIR program: SBIR grantees are more likely to attract external patents. This finding also confirms that innovation requires a portfolio of internal and external knowledge assets as theorized by David Teece and his colleagues. This dissertation's empirical results may be relevant to the Small Business Administration, SBIR participating agencies, the U.S. Congress, other federal, state and local policymakers, small high-tech start-ups, and scholars in the field of science, technology, and innovation policy.PhDCommittee Chair: Cozzens, Susan; Committee Member: Hicks, Diana; Committee Member: Lewis, Gregory; Committee Member: Melkers, Julia; Committee Member: Thursby, Jerr

Evaluating the additionality and certification effects of research and innovation policy on small business start-ups: an inflow-sampling and counterfactual approach

Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy 2011Using a unique inflow sample of business founded in 2004 and tracked ever since, this paper uses non-parametric treatment effect estimators to measure the additionality effect of a U.S. federal R&D program among small business start-ups. Our empirical analysis shows that recipient small business start-ups spent more than four times in research and development (R&D) as much as their observationally similar counterparts did, suggesting that the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants did not crowd out firm-financed R&D