What’s Happening with the Patent Box Regimes? A Systematic Review

Abstract

Patent Box regimes are a tax relief incentive promoted by governments to encourage the R&D activities of enterprises. The literature developed on Patent Box is still examining the effects on certain economic variables. Thus, this research conducted a systematic review of the Patent Box literature since 2010 and applied regimes worldwide. For this aim, the authors developed a comprehensive systematic review using the PRISMA scheme, analyzed the main scientific characteristics with bibliometrix R-package, and prepared a summary table with the attributes collected from the Patent Box scheme applied worldwide. The findings showed that the Patent Box literature is focused on describing applications on countries and implications, analyzing its effects on company and country performance, or examining its influence on location choices. However, there is no definitive consensus on its effect on innovation or economic outcomes, which finally depends on the design of this scheme. As an applied tool, Patent Box is mainly used in European countries. This review and future updates could help as a reference monitor of the Patent Box mechanism.