The paper presents results from an evaluation of publicly-funded R&D assistance provided to New Zealand firms. One of the features of the evaluation is the use of the Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) which contains high quality and comprehensive firm-level data. Presentation Abstract: Evaluation has relied on survey data sources. Different fields of social sciences (political science, sociology, and economics) were revolutionized using modern survey methods and techniques for analysing these data. However, the research frontier moves to the use of administrative data. Administrative data are highly preferable to survey data because a) full population files are generally available and offer much larger sample sizes, b) administrative data have a longitudinal structure that enables evaluators to follow individuals over time and address many critical policy questions, c) administrative data do not suffer from high rates of non-response, attrition, and under-reporting. This paper presents results from an evaluation of publicly-funded R&D assistance provided to New Zealand firms. We use the Statistics New Zealand prototype Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) which contains high quality and comprehensive firm-level data.#2012Conference #Research,Technology,andDevelopmentEval