We examine the impact of government funding for R&D—and defense-related R&D in particular—on privately conducted R&D and its ultimate effect on productivity growth. We estimate longitudinal models that relate privately funded R&D to lagged government-funded R&D using industry-country level data from OECD countries and firm level data from France. To deal with the potentially endogenous allocation of government R&D funds, we use changes in predicted defense R&D as an instrumental variable. In many OECD countries, expenditures for defense-related R&D represent by far the most important form of public subsidies for innovation. In both datasets, we uncover evidence of “crowding in” rather than “crowding out,” as increases in government-funded R&D for an industry or a firm result in significant increases in private sector R&D in that industry or firm. On average, a 10% increase in government-financed R&D generates a 5% to 6% additional increase in privately funded R&D. We also find evidence of international spillovers, as increases in government-funded R&D in a particular industry and country raise private R&D in the same industry in other countries. Finally, we find that increases in private R&D induced by increases in defense R&D result in productivity gains.

We introduce a novel empirical strategy to measure the size of credit shocks. Theoretically, we show that credit shocks reduce the value of long-term relative to short-term investments. Empirically, we can therefore compare the reduction of long-term relative to short-term investments within firms, allowing for firm-times-year fixed effects. Using Spanish firm-level data, we estimate the credit crunch to be equivalent to an additional tax rate of around 11% on the longest-lived capital. To pin down credit constraints as the underlying cause, we apply triple-differences strategies using foreign ownership or precrisis debt maturity.