In this study, we examined the effects of the research and innovation program of Sweden’s innovation agency Vinnova. The study covers the period of 2010-2012 regarding Swedish companies patent applications.

Publicly supported R&D collaboration is a widespread policy tool to increase national innovation capacity. By combining firm-level data on collaborative and non-collaborative research grants from Sweden’s innovation agency, Vinnova, with patent and register data, we investigate the relationship between Vinnova research funding, research collaboration and firm patenting behavior. Using modern matching methods to find control groups and a difference-in-differences (DiD) estimator we analyze three questions: Does Vinnova's research grants affect the number of patents the Swedish companies apply? Does support for research collaborations have greater impact than support to individual firms? Do the effects of the research collaboration differ depending on the types of actors involved in the innovation projects? We conclude that Vinnova research grants increase the number of patents filed by the Swedish firms. Our analysis does not give evidence that support for research collaboration have a greater impact than support to individual firms. We also conclude that research collaborations including academia have a larger effect on patent activity than research collaboration between firms.