Assessing the impact of digital technology diffusion policies. Evidence from Italy

Barbara Bratta, Livio Romano, Paolo Acciari and Francesca Mazzolari

Economics of Innovation and New Technology, 2023, vol. 32, issue 8, 1114-1137

Abstract: This paper provides firm-level evidence on how subsidies to buyers of advanced digital production technologies work in sustaining private investments in innovation, and how such investments correlate with firms’ demand for labor. By exploiting the introduction in 2017 of a fiscal incentive granted to all Italian companies purchasing tangible goods instrumental to their digital transformation, we are able to quantify the volume of the subsidized investments within the national economy, to correlate the decision to invest with ex-ante structural and strategic characteristics of the beneficiary firms, and to evaluate the labor market effects (hirings and separations) of these investments at the firm level, for different classes of workers and firms. Overall, the analysis suggests that the policy has been so far an effective means to support the advanced digital technology transformation of the Italian production system and that such transformation has been positively correlated with employment growth at investing firms.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10438599.2022.2075357 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ecinnt:v:32:y:2023:i:8:p:1114-1137

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/GEIN20

DOI: 10.1080/10438599.2022.2075357

Access Statistics for this article

Economics of Innovation and New Technology is currently edited by Professor Cristiano Antonelli

More articles in Economics of Innovation and New Technology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().