O impacto da lei do bem sobre o desempenho econômico de empresas de capital aberto

Abstract

The Research, Development and Innovation activity has proven inseparable from the economic development of nations and the competitiveness of enterprises. In this context, innovation public policies are often implemented by governments, like tax incentives, whose interest is justified by the influence of innovation on economic growth indicators. In 2005, the Law 11.196 (Lei do Bem) completes a decade of tax benefits to innovative companies in Brazil. This study aims to answer whether this instrument actually affects the economic performance of companies, inferring whether the “Lei do Bem” affected the profitability of targeted publicly traded companies from 2006 to 2012. The sample consists of 173 listed companies, participants or non-participants of the Lei do Bem, from 18 sectors, resulting in 1.117 observations. Controlling for observables, the goal was to measure the impact of “Lei o Bem” over companies’ Return on Assets (ROA). Both the Pool of OLS method and the Differences in Differences method revealed that the “Lei do Bem” had a positive and statistically significant (1%) impact on companie´s ROA. Results indicate that benefits from the “Lei do Bem” are to increase the companies’ ROA by 1.65 p.p. on average, suggesting that this is a mechanism leading to positive results in the economic performance of companies. Thus, the study helps to portrait the influence of the tax incentives of Lei do Bem in the ROA of public companies.