世界银行-促进创新创业_来自突尼斯的准实验证据（英）-2025.5_56页_899kb

Tunisia’s Startup Act Evaluation

Summary

The research examines the impact of Tunisia’s Startup Act, a program introduced in 2019 to promote innovative startups through a label and various incentives, such as reduced social security contributions, corporate tax exemptions, eased foreign exchange access, and simplified customs procedures.

Using a difference-in-differences strategy on data from 466 firms that applied between March 2019 and December 2021, the program is shown to:

• Significantly increase firm survival by 18 percentage points (from 53% baseline).
• Boost employment by an average of 1.7–2.0 workers per firm after receiving the label.
• Increase wage bills by an average of 54,000–69,000 Tunisian Dinars.
• Have an imprecisely estimated effect on sales and no detectable effect on profits.

The program is cost-effective, with a benefit-cost ratio of approximately 2.68 (Pitch Sample). The study highlights preferential customs treatment and foreign currency access as key drivers of positive outcomes, though no single component was isolated due to bundled incentives.

The selection process minimizes selection bias, as judges evaluated firms based on innovation and scalability, not commercial viability. Results for the Pitch Sample (firms that required further evaluation) align with the Full Sample, reducing concerns about endogeneity.

The findings provide empirical evidence that targeted policies can foster high-tech startups in developing contexts, contributing to literature on entrepreneurship and firm growth.