Evaluating Public Supports To The Investment Activities Of Business Firms: A Meta-Regression Analysis Of Italian Studies

This paper presents a meta-regression analysis of recent micro-econometric evaluations of enterprise and innovation policies implemented in Italy. We categorise 478 programme impacts from 43 studies, all obtained using methods that are appropriate for causal inference in observational settings, and analyse which programme, study and estimate characteristics are associated with higher probability of success net of unobserved heterogeneity at the study level. We find that several types of programmes yield non-negligible probability of success and that the outcome variable used to measure programme impact matters. If there exist any differential in probability of success between the government levels that may deliver the programmes, this differential is favourable to regional governments.