Business support policies designed to raise productivity and employment are common worldwide, but rigorous micro-econometric evaluation of their causal effects is rare. We exploit multiple changes in the area-specific eligibility criteria for a major program to support manufacturing jobs...

A series of studies in a number of countries have found that foreign-owned firms are more productive than domestic firms. However, almost all this work compares foreign firms - which are, by definition, multinationals - with all domestic firms. This paper analyses for the first time in the UK...