IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp18036.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Reshaping the Economy? Local Reallocation Effects of Place-Based Policies

Author

Listed:
  • Fritz, Sarah

    (Halle Institute for Economic Research)

  • van der List, Catherine

    (University of Essex)

Abstract

We study the effects of place-based policies on aggregate productivity using administrative data on projects co-financed by the EU in Italy linked to balance sheet data. We exploit quasi-experimental variation in funding for a large place-based policy stemming from measurement error in regional GDP estimates. Results show that the policy likely decreases productivity. Decompositions reveal that aggregate declines are driven by reallocation of labor to low-productivity firms. Mechanism analysis using firm-level event studies reveals that negative reallocation effects are caused by high-productivity firms taking up the funds and subsequently becoming more liquidity constrained, leading to slowdowns in employment growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Fritz, Sarah & van der List, Catherine, 2025. "Reshaping the Economy? Local Reallocation Effects of Place-Based Policies," IZA Discussion Papers 18036, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18036
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp18036.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Greenstone & Richard Hornbeck & Enrico Moretti, 2010. "Identifying Agglomeration Spillovers: Evidence from Winners and Losers of Large Plant Openings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(3), pages 536-598, June.
    2. Enrico Moretti, 2014. "Local Economic Development, Agglomeration Economies, and the Big Push: 100 Years of Evidence from the Tennessee Valley Authority," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(1), pages 275-331.
    3. Patrick Kline, 2010. "Place Based Policies, Heterogeneity, and Agglomeration," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(2), pages 383-387, May.
    4. repec:oup:qjecon:v:129:y:2013:i:1:p:275-331 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sarah Fritz & Lorenzo Incoronato & Catherine van der List, 2025. "Declining Free Lunch: State Capacity and Foregone Public Spending," CESifo Working Paper Series 12126, CESifo.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Neumark, David & Simpson, Helen, 2015. "Place-Based Policies," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 1197-1287, Elsevier.
    2. Abebe, Girum & McMillan, Margaret & Serafinelli, Michel, 2022. "Foreign direct investment and knowledge diffusion in poor locations," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    3. Sarah Fritz & Catherine van der List, 2025. "Reshaping the Economy? Local Reallocation Effects of Place-Based Policies," CESifo Working Paper Series 12031, CESifo.
    4. Severnini, Edson, 2014. "The Power of Hydroelectric Dams: Agglomeration Spillovers," IZA Discussion Papers 8082, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Wang, Jin, 2013. "The economic impact of Special Economic Zones: Evidence from Chinese municipalities," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 133-147.
    6. Falck, Oliver & Koenen, Johannes & Lohse, Tobias, 2019. "Evaluating a place-based innovation policy: Evidence from the innovative Regional Growth Cores Program in East Germany," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    7. Siqi Zheng & Weizeng Sun & Jianfeng Wu & Matthew E. Kahn, 2015. "The Birth of Edge Cities in China: Measuring the Spillover Effects of Industrial Parks," NBER Working Papers 21378, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Shimeng Liu, 2015. "Spillovers from Universities: Evidence from the Land-Grant Program," Working Paper 9410, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
    9. Liu, Shimeng, 2015. "Spillovers from universities: Evidence from the land-grant program," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 25-41.
    10. Zhao, Chuanmin & Xie, Rui & Ma, Chunbo & Han, Feng, 2022. "Understanding the haze pollution effects of China's development zone program," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    11. Stephan Heblich & Stephen J Redding & Daniel M Sturm, 2020. "The Making of the Modern Metropolis: Evidence from London," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(4), pages 2059-2133.
    12. Rafael Dix-Carneiro & Brian K. Kovak, 2015. "Trade Reform and Regional Dynamics: Evidence From 25 Years of Brazilian Matched Employer-Employee Data," NBER Working Papers 20908, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Venables, Anthony & Duranton, Gilles, 2018. "Place-Based Policies for Development," CEPR Discussion Papers 12889, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Hasan, Rana & Jiang, Yi & Rafols, Radine Michelle, 2021. "Place-based preferential tax policy and industrial development: Evidence from India’s program on industrially backward districts," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    15. Aaron Chatterji & Edward Glaeser & William Kerr, 2014. "Clusters of Entrepreneurship and Innovation," Innovation Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 14(1), pages 129-166.
    16. Andrew Hanson & Shawn Rohlin, 2024. "Local employment multipliers for large publicly subsidized firms: Evidence from a synthetic control approach," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(2), pages 491-526, March.
    17. Ralph Ossa, 2015. "A Quantitative Analysis of Subsidy Competition in the U.S," 2015 Meeting Papers 1107, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    18. David Card & Jesse Rothstein & Moises Yi, 2021. "Location, Location, Location," Working Papers 21-32, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    19. Bernstein, Shai & Colonnelli, Emanuele & Giroud, Xavier & Iverson, Benjamin, 2019. "Bankruptcy spillovers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(3), pages 608-633.
    20. Patrick Kline & Enrico Moretti, 2014. "People, Places, and Public Policy: Some Simple Welfare Economics of Local Economic Development Programs," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 629-662, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
    • R58 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Regional Government Analysis - - - Regional Development Planning and Policy
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • Z18 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Public Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18036. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.