让补贴发挥作用：规则与相机抉择
Making Subsidies Work: Rules versus Discretion
Econometrica · 2025 · [{"name": "Federico Cingano", "affiliation": ["Bank of Italy"]}, {"name": "Filippo Palomba", "affiliation": ["Princeton University"]}, {"name": "Paolo Pinotti", "affiliation": ["Center for Economic and Policy Research", "Bocconi University"]}, {"name": "Enrico Rettore", "affiliation": ["University of Padua"]}]
中文摘要
我们估计了一项针对私营企业的大规模公共投资补贴计划的就业效应，该计划依据同时反映客观规则与地方政治家自由裁量权的评分对申请者进行排名。利用资金配给作为一种理想的断点回归设计，我们刻画了边际内企业之间处理效应与每个新增岗位成本的异质性，并估计了在事实分配与反事实分配下补贴的成本效益。在客观规则上排名较高的企业以及受地方政治家偏好的企业平均产生了更大的就业增长，但后者的每个新增岗位成本更高。我们估计，仅依赖客观标准将使每个新增岗位成本降低11%，而仅依赖政治自由裁量权将使该成本增加42%。
Abstract
We estimate the employment effects of a large program of public investment subsidies to private firms that ranked applicants on a score reflecting both objective rules and local politicians' discretion. Leveraging the rationing of funds as an ideal Regression Discontinuity Design, we characterize the heterogeneity of treatment effects and cost‐per‐new‐job across inframarginal firms and estimate the cost‐effectiveness of subsidies under factual and counterfactual allocations. Firms ranking high on objective rules and firms preferred by local politicians generated larger employment growth on average, but the latter did so at a higher cost per job. We estimate that relying only on objective criteria would reduce the cost per job by 11%, while relying only on political discretion would increase such cost by 42%.