 Does language prevent policy take-up? Evidence from the Italian Start-up ActMichele Cantarella, Nicolò Fraccaroli and Roberto Volpe Research Policy, 2024, vol. 53, issue 6 Abstract: Does ethnolinguistic diversity prevent policy adoption? The implementation of the Italian Start-up Act of 2012 in the bilingual (German and Italian) region of Trentino-Alto Adige offers the ideal setting to investigate this question. The Act sets up a scheme of benefits which young firms can access by registering as “innovative start-ups” on a voluntary basis. We find that policy take-up has been persistently lower in areas of the region with more German speakers, as local firms with German-named administrators are less likely to register as start-ups than firms with Italian-named ones. These findings are robust to firm characteristics and regional heterogeneity and are also visible within mixed-language municipalities. Furthermore, text analysis on press sources suggests that this national policy was much more extensively covered in the Italian-language local media, while a survey of local residents indicates that German speakers have lower knowledge of national policies unless they are embedded in multilingual networks. Keywords: Ethnolinguistic asymmetries; Start-ups; Innovation policy; Network embeddedness (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:53:y:2024:i:6:s0048733324000532 DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2024.105004 Access Statistics for this article Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier |
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