In Europe several countries adopt different incentives to increase regional development. Some subsidies are targeted to small and medium enterprises, others to large enterprises. Even if the subsidies are targeted to specific industrial aspects, there is a substantial degree of territorial...

There is still little consensus on the effectiveness of business support policies. The empirical evaluation is complicated by the difficulty in achieving reliable identification. We analyse the impact of Law 488/92, the main Italian regional policy. We propose a new approach, named multiple...

Developed countries have used several place-based policies to address the socioeconomic underdevelopment of their lagging regions ranging from tax exemptions to soft loans. Among these place-based policies, investment subsidies to private firms are one of the most popular in the EU. However, the...

The paper analyses the causal effect of capital subsidies on firms? efficiency and productivity by exploiting the conditions for a local random experiment created by Law 488/92 (henceforth L488), which has been an important policy instrument for reducing territorial disparities in Italy. The...