No abstract

This study examines whether there is agency cost in a public R&D subsidy program by applying agency theory. If there is agency cost, the composition ratio of the government subsidy and the firm's own R&D fund would have a significant (-) effect on technological performance. Companies that received a public R&D subsidy in Korea from 2000 to 2009 were selected as a sample. Frequency analysis and multiple regression analysis were used. The independent variables was the ratio of public R&D subsidy cost to the Firm's own R&D cost, and the dependent variables were the number of patent applications and the number of patents registered. The control variables were firm size and R&D cost. The results show that there are agency problems in the government-sponsored R&D system. A future study is needed to examine how much agency problems deteriorate the efficiency of the system.