Personal website - Research

Selected publications (with comments on their contribution and how they fit into my research agenda):

Kelchtermans, S., Neicu, D., & Teirlinck, P. (2020). The role of peer effects in firms’ usage of R&D tax exemptions. Journal of Business Research, 108, 74-91.

This paper analyzes firms' first use of a newly-introduced R&D tax exemption scheme in Belgium. We identify endogenous peer effects in industry and location-based peer groups by exploiting the intransitivity in firms’ networks as well as variation in peer group size. While most policy evaluations focus on the treatment effect of a given measure, little attention is given to the often very low adoption rates of public support among eligible firms. The paper supplies robust empirical evidence of (hard to identify) peer effects in firms’ adoption decisions, and has raised considerable interest in discussions with representatives of innovation agencies.

Belderbos, R., Grabowska, M, Leten, B., Kelchtermans, S. Ugur, N. (2017). On the Use of Computer-Aided Text Analysis in International Business Research. Global Strategy Journal, 7(3): 312-331. DOI: 10.1002/gsj.1162 (top-20 most downloaded article in GSJ, 2017-2018)

This article demonstrates the potential of computer-aided text analysis (CATA) as a technique to operationalize hard-to-measure constructs in international business research. The article shows that the potential of text analysis can be unleashed only provided the validity of the derived indicators is thoroughly tested. It develops a novel method with broad applicability for the analysis of unstructured textual data. Although such methods have recently garnered a lot of interest from management scholars, this paper demonstrates the numerous caveats associated with building valid indicators using noisy data.

Neicu, D., Teirlinck, P., & Kelchtermans, S. (2016). Dipping in the policy mix: do R&D subsidies foster behavioral additionality effects of R&D tax credits? Economics of Innovation and New Technology, 25(3), 218-239.

Using matching estimators and a multivariate probit analysis of cross-sectional survey data on Belgian firms, this paper analyzes how behavioral additionality effects of wage-based R&D tax credits are influenced by the firm’s joint use of R&D subsidies. It contributes in 2 ways: first, it demonstrates that many policy evaluations (based on incomplete observation of firms’ behavior) fail to rule out ‘hidden treatment’ effects and lead to misguided policy advice. Second, it breaks new ground by showing that looking beyond typically considered outcome variables like R&D investments yields nuanced insights about the mechanisms behind public support.

Della Malva, A., Kelchtermans, S., Leten, B. & Veugelers, R. (2014). Basic Science as a Prescription for Breakthrough Inventions in the Pharmaceutical Industry. The Journal of Technology Transfer. DOI 10.1007/s10961-014-9362-y

Like some of my work on scientific productivity, this paper zooms in on the top end of the distribution, in this case pharmaceutical firms’ inventive productivity. It tackles an issue of high managerial relevance i.e. the role of basic science in private firms, tying into the debate on the productivity in drug development, which is by many accounts considered (too) low. By combining the firm level and the firm-technology level, the analysis yielded the novel insight that, when it comes to a firm’s ability to generated patentable technology that attracts very numbers of citations (breakthroughs), its basic science activities typically pay off in ‘off-the-diagonal’ technological fields. This paper also ties into my other research on the organization of corporate science, in particular industry-science links and the translation of science into technology.

Kelchtermans, S. and R. Veugelers (2013). Top Research Productivity and Its Persistence: Gender as a Double-Edged Sword. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 95(1): 273–285.

This paper contributes to the debate on top performance in research productivity, its persistence over time, and the impact of gender. It provides evidence-based input to a very topical debate, as shown by for example the panel on gender bias in economics at the 2019 AEA conference. Moreover, the key finding of this paper brings nuance to the discussion as it shows that gender differences do not always operate in a simple fashion, since top female scientists are shown to be more persistent once they achieve the top.

Kelchtermans, S. and R. Veugelers (2011). The Great Divide in Scientific Productivity. Why the average scientist does not exist. Industrial and Corporate Change, 20(1): 295-336. DOI: 10.1093/icc/dtq074

This paper asks the question whether the drivers of scientific productivity at the individual researcher level play out differently across the distribution, acknowledging the very skew productivity distribution. This view unearths insights on the heterogeneity between researchers that would remain hidden if the analysis had been restricted to the conditional mean. The paper stands out from many other papers on this topic because it combines a novel question, close scrutiny of the data and going the extra mile in terms of methodology.

Kelchtermans, S. and F. Verboven (2010). Program Duplication in Higher Education is Not Necessarily Bad. Journal of Public Economics, 94(5-6): 397-409.

This paper applies a discrete choice framework to tackle a question of high societal relevance i.e. the efficiency of higher education supply. It uses a novel idea to generate an estimate of students’ sensitivity to cost (despite the lack of variation in tuition fees), captures the own-and cross-cost elasticities of demand in a detailed way, and leverages the model estimates to do a welfare analysis of real policy proposals.