Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.2478/zireb-2025-0016
Public Funding of Entrepreneurship: a Case Study on Start-ups in Romania
Bogdan Glavan
orcid.org/0009-0006-6365-5751
; Romanian-American University, Bucharest, Romania
*
Flavia Anghel
orcid.org/0009-0000-7753-0497
; National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania
Karl-Friedrich Israel
; Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
Governments attempt to stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation in various ways and with different results. In 2015 the Romanian government began to subsidize the creation of start-ups, following a general policy of the European Union. We evaluate the effects of the Romania Start-up Program, which offered subsidies for hundreds of entrepreneurs in a large variety of economic sectors. We statistically compare subsidized and unsubsidized start-ups, by calculating the Kaplan-Meier estimators of survival rates in both groups over a 5-year period. We show that subsidized start-ups have a significantly lower survival rate than non-subsidized start-ups after 4 to 5 years. Moreover, the level of employment in subsidized start-ups decreased drastically compared to their non-subsidized counterparts. Examining the survival rates of subsidized start-ups created with/without additional private investment, we find that start-ups with “skin in the game” have a higher survival rate, although we cannot draw statistically significant conclusions.
Keywords
start-ups; entrepreneurship; state aid; firm subsidies; public grants
Hrčak ID:
341949
URI
Publication date:
30.11.2025.
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