Support for firms' innovation in Turkey and Poland

As the importance of innovation and technological development is recognized more and more, government strategies increasingly consider innovation and technology. In their new study entitled: "Does Government Support for Private Innovation Matter? Firm-Level Evidence from Turkey and Poland", Wojciech Grabowski, Teoman Pamukcu, Sinan Tandogan and Krzysztof Szczygielski compare the scale, scope and institutional architecture of Turkish and Polish policies aimed at supporting firms’ innovation and analyze those policies’ efficiency. These two countries were chosen given their comparable stage of economic development and technological capabilities.

Despite the similarities, the authors conclude that the two countries’ approaches to fostering innovation and technological development are considerably different. Whereas Turkey witnessed a number of changes and improvements concerning science and technology policy schemes, Poland has put less emphasis on science, technology and innovation (STI) policy during transition and, consequently, has underprovided funding and lacked coordination and vision. The availability of funds in the two countries varies as well. In Turkey, government support focuses on R&D and the development of truly innovative products and production processes. In Poland, on the other hand, most of the funds are allocated towards investing in new machinery and equipment. According to the authors, this proves to contribute significantly less to innovation performance than support for R&D activities in firms. Therefore, the authors argue for revision of this part of Poland’s STI policy, especially in the context of the upcoming new EU Financial Perspective.

Read the full publication here.