The Role of Regulation on Entry : Evidence from the Italian Provinces

This paper studies the effects of differences in local administrative burdens in Italy in the years 2005–2007 preceding a major reform that sped up firm registration procedures. Combining regulatory data from a survey on Italian provinces before th...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Bripi, Francesco
Format: Working Paper
Language:English
en_US
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2016
Subjects:
TAX
AIR
WEB
GDP
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/04/26279734/role-regulation-entry-evidence-italian-provinces
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24224
Description
Summary:This paper studies the effects of differences in local administrative burdens in Italy in the years 2005–2007 preceding a major reform that sped up firm registration procedures. Combining regulatory data from a survey on Italian provinces before the reform (costs and time to start a business) with industry-level entry rates of limited liability firms, it explores the effects of regulatory barriers on the average of the annual entry rates across industries with different natural propensities to enter the market. The estimates of the cross-sectional analysis show that lengthier and, to some extent, more costly procedures reduced entry in sectors with naturally high entry. A one-day delay in registration procedures reduces the entry rate in highly dynamic sectors by more than 1 percent. These results hold when I include measures of local financial development and of efficiency of bankruptcy procedures are included.