The Asymmetric Use of Incentives in Portugal: The Example of PRIME

PRIME has been between 2000 and 2006 a commonly used public policy instrument. Although nationally promoted, it served the diffusion of European funds across the entrepreneurial tissue. In this paper we intend to follow the application of this instrument for a monitoring and strategic evaluation of policy support system to companies’; in particularly, the analyses at regional scale can identify some eventual hindrances to success. Methodologically, we have observed the financing execution of 14910 projects, collected from the official information portal of PRIME in Portugal. Due to limitations related to the information sources of the portal our study deals with a reduced number of variables: project location, year, industrial activity, financial program, NUT, district, investment and incentive. Nevertheless, the application of HOMALS, Cluster and Correspondence Analyses was possible, allowing conclusions about the level of effectiveness of PRIME across, both, location and sectors levels