How public financial instruments impact on the economy of a territory

This study investigates the impact that public-private financial programs have on the innovation activities of a territory. The results should help orienting the allocation of public resources to the most effective and efficient instruments. First, a set of innovation indicators is built, made of traditional indicators (e.g. R&D effort, Patents & Patent applications) and non-traditional indicators taken from the available literature (e.g. Kleinknecht et al, 2001). The indicators chosen take into consideration the local conditions and are normalized in order to make comparison possible among schemes activated in environments with heterogeneous characteristics. The chosen set of indicators is used to evaluate the impact of several schemes adopted in different countries and in different geographic areas (Europe, North America, Asia) on the innovation grade of the territory. The study is not intended to identify the best scheme among all, but to understand which scheme is the most appropriate to be adopted by the Public Sector in order to pursue its objectives of bridging the Equity Gap for high technology/innovation firms according to the peculiarities of the local territory.