The purpose of this paper is to offer empirical evidence on the impact generated by investment subsidies awarded to industrial firms on employment, sales, investments and labor productivity. The analysis is based on unique firm-level administrative data provided by the Italian National...

Although business incentive programs of different forms have been the bulk of local economic development policies in many industrialized countries for more than the last three decades, evaluating their impact on employment or local economic growth outcomes remains a challenging task due to the...

Business incentive programs have been increasingly popular within the EU as regional economic development tools to promote employment growth in areas with severely distressed and/or declining socio-economic conditions. Reliable evidenced on the effective net employment impact of such initiatives...

This paper proposes an empirical method to evaluate decentralized economic development programs with heterogeneous characteristics implemented in different regions or states. The evaluation design developed in the paper is a comparative analysis that operationalizes differences in regional...

Beginning in 1989, the European Union started targeting its Structural Funds business incentives geographically to industrial areas that have been facing above average unemployment and industrial job loss. Although billions of euros have been invested in these Objective 2 areas, very little is...

This paper compares and contrasts the United States federal Empowerment Zone and European Union Objective 2 programs that geographically target economic revitalization incentives. Since 1989, both programs have designated predominately industrial or urban areas as being distressed and worthy of...