Scaling new ventures with public funding : assessing a business acceleration program in a developing country
Fecha
2022
Autores
Rodríguez Vahos, Alejandro
Título de la revista
ISSN de la revista
Título del volumen
Editor
Universidad EAFIT
Resumen
A debate on whether new ventures should be supported or not with public funding is alive. Taking a position in this discussion requires rigorous assessments of implemented programs. However, a few efforts mostly focused on regional cases in developed countries exists. By filling up this gap, our paper seeks to measure the effects of a regional acceleration program from Medellin, Colombia. We take support from capabilities theory, which sets the basis to suggest different firm characteristics that help with the identification of an appropriate impact evaluation modeling through propensity score match, using a sample of 60 (treatment) and 16,994 (control) firms. Our matching results indicate that treated firms had a higher revenue on average than control firms, confirming a positive impact on growth measures. However, such financial growth is mostly observed in service firms as compared to other economic sectors. These findings tip the balance in favor of the literature suggesting supportive programs for high-growth firms as opposed to everyday entrepreneurship. Further evaluations, with a longer time span, and using more outcome variables, are suggested in the context of similar public funded programs in developing countries.