R&D Subsidies and Productivity in SMEs in the Eurozone

The paper contributes to the existing literature through analysis of relationship between labour productivity and government spending on research and development in the eurozone countries as a whole. In particular, small and medium enterprises should aim to increase the labour productivity and use the possibilities of funding from the structural funds. The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the relationship between labour productivity and government spending on research and development in the eurozone. In particular, its purpose is to investigate this relationship in the case of small and medium enterprises. By utilizing causality tests and error correction models, the results suggest that support of research and development is the cause of labour productivity growth in the long-term period. However, for the short-term period changes in labour productivity precede changes in government spending on research and development. Based on the findings, the study has several theoretical and practical implications. The data sources were the Eurostat database. The data used have the character of annual time series in the period between 2004 and 2016. GRETL software was used for the calculations.