The Economic Impact of Support to Businesses Delivered by Laboratories Funded by the National Measurement System (NMS) Programme

Tender description

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is the UK's National Measurement Institute and is a world-leading centre of excellence in developing and applying the most accurate measurement standards, science, and technology available. NMS is required to provide innovation support to the UK industry. The evidence for this support is expected to cover, among other things, productivity and employment growth among firms which engage with and are supported by the laboratories funded through the NMS. Previously, two econometric studies commissioned by NMS and Innovate UK (IUK) titled ‘The Impact of Public Support for Innovation on Firm Outcomes’ and ‘Public Support for Innovation and Businesses Outcomes’ was carried out. There is a need for a new study that will employ a combination of econometric approaches from both previous studies, and additional innovative methods, to provide new evidence on the impact of innovation support on the performance of businesses supported by the NMS. Hence, this study is proposed to achieve this purpose by using current data up to 2022. However, the focus will only be on the NMS supported businesses, with emphasis on marginal effects analysis. The goal of this study is to estimate the impact of NMS innovation support on business outcomes.