Analyses of born-global firms have not yet provided a comprehensive picture of the role of public aid in supporting those firms that specifically seek to internationalize early and intensively. To fill this gap, this paper uses a unique dataset that combines comprehensive information about both the production and export activities of newly established French manufacturing firms and a variety of public support instruments allocated to those firms by Bpifrance, the French public investment bank. Our key result is that French born globals are less likely than their more traditional exporting counterparts to receive public aid dedicated to generally support their investment projects. By contrast, they are as or more likely to receive public aids specifically dedicated to support their innovation and internationalization projects. We also show that the returns on aid dedicated to investment projects are especially high for born globals. We conclude that there is room to improve the allocative efficiency of public support towards born-global firms.

Citation: Bellone, F., Laffineur, C. & Pommet, S. (2023). Public Aid and the Performance of Born Globals. Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, 540, 43–60 (First published online: August 2023). doi: 10.24187/ecostat.2023.540.2102