Measuring the effect of business incubation in Oslo : an empirical study on performance, survival, and access to public subsidies
Master thesis
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https://hdl.handle.net/11250/2737202Utgivelsesdato
2020Metadata
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- Master Thesis [4505]
Sammendrag
This paper examines the effect of participation in a business incubation program in Oslo,
Norway, measured in terms of economic performance, survival rates, and access to public
subsidies.
Our research involves incubated companies entering an incubator from 2011 and 2016,
matching with comparable companies with similar characteristics. Furthermore, we use the
data available for these companies in the period 2011-2018 to analyse the effect incubators
have on the incubated companies.
To measure the effect of incubator participation, we construct a representative control group
by using coarsened exact matching combined with nearest Mahalanobis distance. We then
use difference-in-differences estimation (DiD) to estimate the effect of the incubator
program on the incubated companies.
We find that, in terms of performance, the only positive significant effect of incubator
participation is on the number of employees. We find no significant effects on value creation
or sales revenues. However, we also find some evidence of negative effects on operating
profits for the incubated companies. Further, we find no evidence that the group of incubated
companies experience higher survival rates or better access to public subsidies, compared to
the group of control companies.