Cooperation Between Russian Firms and Research Organizations when Conducting R&D: are there Influence on Competitiveness?

This paper discusses the relationship of financing R & D and delegation it to outside agents with the competitiveness of firm. In this case, the company's competitiveness was determined by the indicators of the technological level, profitability and labor productivity. In order to study this question, we used the data of the IIMS survey collected in 2018 across industrial Russian firms. For regression analysis of categorical variables, we used ordinal and multinomial logistic models and for quantitative indicators we used OLS. The study found a positive correlation between financing R & D and indicators of competitiveness, but the additional effect of the delegation to research organizations was not significant. Also, we constructed control groups by using a matching analysis, which are not confirmed additional influence of interaction with agents during R & D. Such results may be associated with a poorly developed research sector, which is why this practice is not widespread and does not allow companies to gain a competitive advantage.