Public procurement as policy instrument for innovation

The use of public procurement to promote private innovation activities has attracted increasing attention recently. Germany implemented a legal change in its procurement framework in 2009, which allowed government agencies to specify innovative aspects of procured products as selection criteria in tender calls. We analyze a representative sample of German firms to investigate whether this reform stimulated innovation in the business sector. Across a wide set of specifications—OLS, nearest-neighbor matching, IV regressions and difference-in-differences—we find a robust and significant effect of innovation-directed public procurement on turnover from new products and services. However, our results show that the effect is largely attributable to innovations of more incremental nature rather than market novelties.nrpages: 39status: publishe