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...

Several studies using firm level data find that foreign-owned firms are more productive than domestic ones. This could reflect a foreign advantage or an omitted variable bias: foreign firms are by definition multinational enterprises (MNEs), and MNEs are typically more productive than non-MNEs....