Who receives R&D tax incentives? Firm capabilities and stage-dependent access

This paper examines which firms are able to access and progress through Colombia's R&D tax-benefit scheme. Using firm-level microdata from three waves of the Colombian Manufacturing Innovation Survey, we estimate sequential logit models to assess how firm capabilities are associated with progression from intention to apply, to application, and ultimately to receipt. The results reveal a clear stage-dependent pattern. General innovation capabilities—including R&D effort, internal innovation resources, information-source breadth, export orientation, and university cooperation—are most strongly associated with firms' initial intention to apply. Conditional on intention, progression to application is more closely related to organizational scale and university cooperation. Conditional on application, receipt is less consistently associated with broad innovation effort, while the stage-specific analysis provides only suggestive evidence of associations with more specific organizational and relational characteristics. Additional analyses indicate that exposure to other forms of public innovation support is associated primarily with initial engagement rather than with progression at later stages. These findings suggest that formal eligibility does not translate automatically into effective access to R&D tax incentives. This implies that evaluations of tax incentives should account for the selective processes that precede receipt. For policymakers, the results indicate that broad-based fiscal incentives may need to be complemented by stage-specific information, administrative assistance, and capability-building measures if access is to extend beyond firms already equipped to navigate the scheme.