Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics
Discussion Papers on Economics,
University of Southern Denmark, Department of Economics
No 9/2019: Intended and unintended effects of public incentives for innovation. Quasi-experimental evidence from Italy
Giovanni Mellace () and Marco Ventura
Additional contact information
Giovanni Mellace: Department of Business and Economics, Postal: University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M, Denmark
Marco Ventura: Department of Economics and Law, Postal: Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Abstract: This paper provides an extensive empirical evaluation of a policy introduced in Italy at the end of 2012 to incentivize young innovative start-up firms. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) we estimate the causal effects of the policy on the firms’ share of intangible assets, turnover, number of employees, and number of partners. Our results indicate that two years after its implementation the policy was effective only in increasing the number of partners, thus attracting private investments, but failed, at least in the short run, in boosting innovation or increasing employment. It follows that the new investors generated by the policy might have been attracted only by the tax benefit and had little interest in innovation.
Keywords: Policy evaluation; regression discontinuity design; incentives to innovations
23 pages, August 28, 2019
Full text files
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