. similarly, ensuring competition also requires that the national commission on markets and competition be equipped with sufficient human and technical resources. this is especially important in a context of accelerated technological change that can increase market power at some firms. go pinath et al. ( 2017 ) and garcia - santana et al. ( 2020 ). albrizio et al. ( 2023 ). bardhan ( 2002 ), mora - sanguinetti and perez - valls ( 2020 ), de lucio and mo ra - sanguinetti ( 2021 ), de lucio and mo rasanguinetti ( 2022 ), mo ra - sanguinetti ( 2022 ) and mo ra - sanguinetti et al. ( 2023 ). almunia and lo pez - ro driguez ( 2018 ). 3 human capital the level of human capital has proven a crucial factor in driving innovation and business growth. for example, r & d & i investment in european countries with a higher level of human capital ( based on the numeracy scores under the programme for the international assessment of adult competencies ) is on average 1 pp higher than in spain. this is not surprising, since the quality of the workforce and their technological and digital skills are essential foundations for the absorption of knowledge and the innovative capacity of any economy. despite a notable improvement in recent decades, the educational attainment level of employers, the self - employed and employees in spain is lower than the euro area average. according to eurostat data, in spain, 35. 5 % of the self - employed, 34 % of employers and 29. 6 % of employees had a low educational attainment level in 2023 q2. these figures are well above those observed in the euro area as a whole ( 20. 1 %, 19. 4 % and 18. 6 %, respectively ). the recent increase in interest in pursuing vocational training after secondary education is encouraging, but the new vocational training law, which established the dual model, poses a challenge. in particular, the new law is aimed squarely at increasing the proportion of in - company work experience, tasking firms with offering a significant number of apprenticeship opportunities. the success of this initiative will depend on effective collaboration between the business sector and educational institutions. turning to universities, the relatively low share of graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics continues to stand out. according to eurostat data for 2021, 24 % of spanish students in tertiary education are enrolled in a

prompting firms to increase their investment and productivity. our estimates suggest that the greater the complementarity of public investment with private investment, the greater the economic impact, such that over a period of five to ten years, the impact on activity may be 1. 5 to 2 times greater compared with a lower level of complementarity. 11 see, fo r example, the assessment o f the effectiveness o f tax incentives fo r r & d & i in the united kingdo m ( guceri and liu, 2019 o r dechezlepretre, einio, martin, nguyen and van reenen, 2023 ), canada ( agrawal, ro sell and simco e, 2020 ) and the united states ( rao, 2016 ). blo o m et al. ( 2019 ) o n the general design o f public measures, and akcigit et al. ( 2021 ) o n the appro priate allo cation of grants fo r basic research, co nsidering the co mplementarities with applied research. alo nso and matea ( 2023 ). do minguez - diaz, hurtado and menendez ( 2023 ), banco de espana wo rking paper, fo rthco ming. analysing the private sector tenders linked with the ngeu programme so far, the allocations are comparatively more biased towards relatively large firms. 12 large firms tend to be more productive, so this should have a positive economic impact in the short term. but there is also an opportunity cost, since supporting smaller firms could speed up their development and make a positive contribution to aggregate investment in the long term. moreover, the available evidence suggests 13 that structural reforms that lower the barriers to competition in product markets and ease certain labour market rigidities can magnify the expansionary effect of the european funds ( fiscal multiplier ) in the medium and long term. overall, according to the european commission, by mid - 2023 almost 60 % of the reforms scheduled in spain had been deployed, but the investment implemented was less than 10 %. in this respect it would be desirable for the time frame to be extended, so as to ensure the optimal effectiveness of the ngeu programme. moreover, optimising the impact of ngeu requires undertaking real - time assessment that would enable identification and correction of any possible shortcomings that might arise, in terms of project selection and execution and of the design