Intended and unintended effects of public incentives for innovation. Quasi-experimental evidence from Italy

Giovanni Mellace and Marco Ventura

No 199, Working Papers in Public Economics from Department of Economics and Law, Sapienza University of Roma

Abstract: Italy introduced a policy to incentivize young innovative start-up firms in 2012. Using a regression discontinuity design (RDD) we estimate its causal effects on the firms' share of intangible assets, turnover, number of employees, and number of partners. Our results indicate that after two years the policy was effective in increasing the number of partners, but we do not find any significant effects on innovation, at least in the short run. We provide strong evidence that the new investors might have been attracted by the tax benefit but had little interest in innovation.

Keywords: Policy evaluation; Regression discontinuity design; Incentives to innovations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 H32 L52 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32
Date: 2021-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent, nep-eur, nep-ino, nep-pbe and nep-tid
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Related works:
Working Paper: Intended and unintended effects of public incentives for innovation. Quasi-experimental evidence from Italy (2019)
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