The report analyzes the main intervention lines within Measure 1.6 of the Single Programming Document (SPD) 2000-2006 implemented by the regional government of Tuscany. This measure is aimed at sustaining the processes of new firm creation or existing firm expansion. The interventions that were put into effects during the first decade of the 2000s were basically conceived in terms of self-employment policies. They can be grouped into two main categories: aids to family-support services and aids to female entrepreneurship. While the first kind was granted to a relatively small number of firms and concentrated on a limited set of activities, the second one concerned a large amount of subjects (almost four hundred) in a wide range of activities. Several years after the delivery of intervention, it has been possible to trace how many recipient firms have gone out of business in the meantime. As regards the aids to family-support services, the share of firms that has left the market is approximately 13%, and no significant difference was found between those that at the time were starting or instead expanding their business. On the other hand, the death rate of the female businesses that benefitted from the aid is much higher, on average more than 30%. This rate is markedly high among those subjects who, at the time of aid, were start-ups, and more particularly for those that had just listed in the register of craft trade enterprises. For both sets of measures, no noteworthy differences resulted at sectoral level in the cessation dynamics.
Autore: Alessandro Canzoneri
