On 9 April 2010, the Bank of Italy hosted a workshop on the evaluation of firms' incentives, which follows two others on the same topic held on 28 June 2007 and 22 February 2008. The workshop aimed to encourage the debate on the effects of public aid to firms and how to stimulate the adoption of program evaluation techniques in industrial policy.
It opened with the presentation of a paper assessing the impact of a program of investment incentives (Regional Selective Assistance) implemented in the United Kingdom; next, two papers were presented analysing the effects of public incentives for firms' Research and Development (R&D) investment in Italy; finally it was closed by a paper analysing the relationship between financial subsidies and bank lending.
