Public support to clusters : a firm level study of French 'local productive systems'

This paper analyzes empirically a public policy promoting industrial clusters in France. Cluster policies have become popular in many countries but have not been extensively evaluated. We propose in this paper the first quantitative evaluation of a cluster policy exploiting firm-level data. We use data on production and employment for firms that benefited from the policy and on firms that did not, both before and after the policy started. We first show that the policy selected firms in sectors and regions in relative decline. Second, the policy did not succeed in reversing the relative decline in productivity for the targeted firms. The policy had no robust effect on employment or exports.