To evaluate the effect of an R&D subsidy one needs to know what the subsidized firms would have done without the incentive. This paper studies an Italian programme of subsidies for the applied development of innovations, exploiting a discontinuity in programme financing due to an unexpected...

This paper provides some empirical evidence of the impact of two policy measures designed to support innovation in small and medium firms in an Italian region, both financed using the European Structural Funds but managed at regional level. The first measure was a concessional loan to promote...

In the past decade fixed-term contracts have been widely used to ease the regulatory burden in several European labour markets. Because there is some concern that they might be a dead-end for many worker, policy makers have intervened to increase transitions from fixed-term to open-end...