The Government Subsidy Strategy Choice for Firm’s R&D: Input Subsidy or Product Subsidy?

Abstract

To encourage enterprises to conduct technology innovation, the government needs to formulate appropriate subsidies policy. This paper compares two R&D subsidy policies in a supplier-manufacturer supply chain, in which the manufacturer conducts R&D activity for quality improvement. By means of game theory, we investigate the optimal decisions of the players under the two R&D subsidy policies, that is, input subsidy policy and product subsidy policy. Finally, we compare the profits and welfare to explore the better R&D subsidy policy and provide decision support for government to formulate subsidy policy. The results show that under input subsidy policy the optimal production output, quality improvement, profits, government subsidies, and social welfare are all lower than those of product subsidy policy. Therefore, the government should use product subsidy strategy to encourage enterprise R&D activities.