An Evaluation of Innovation Policies in the Netherlands

This is an empirical study on innovation. A lot of research has been trying to find out what the drivers of innovation really are, though there has not formed one consensus. The special focus on the Netherlands grounds from it being an interesting case: government expenditures on innovation have tremendously increased over the past years, though statistics show innovation in the Netherlands hasn’t improved. In order to be able to pass judgement on the Dutch innovation policy, this paper constructs its own model of innovation. After testing this model, one variable sticks out on having a powerful positive effect on innovation: R&D Expenditure. To give the final evaluation, the governmental budget on innovation has been analysed in order to see if enough is done to augment innovation. It is concluded that the current innovation policy has the right allocation of funds over different policy instruments. Yet the answer to the question what does make innovation decline in the Netherlands remains unclear.