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Assessing the effect of the amount of financial aids to Piedmont firms using the generalized propensity score

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Abstract

Regional and national development policies play an important role to support local enterprises in Italy. The amount of financial aid may be a key feature for firms’ employment policies. We study the impact on employment of the amount of financial aid attributed to enterprises located in Piedmont, a region in northern Italy, analysing small-sized firms and medium- or large-sized firms separately. We apply generalized propensity score methods under the unconfoundedness assumption that adjusting for differences in a set of observed pre-treatment variables removes all biases in comparisons by different amounts of financial aid. We find that the estimated effects are increasing with amount of financial aid for both small-sized and medium- or large-sized firms, whereas the marginal effects of additional incentives are decreasing with amount of financial aid for small-sized firms, and have an inverse J-shape for medium- or large-sized firms.

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Correspondence to Michela Bia.

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Bia, M., Mattei, A. Assessing the effect of the amount of financial aids to Piedmont firms using the generalized propensity score. Stat Methods Appl 21, 485–516 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10260-012-0193-4

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