Sprout of e-enterprises stimulated by public support

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to report selected results from an analysis of Internet-based e-services that were created with the support of the EU sponsored Operational Programme for Innovative Economy run by the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development (PARP). From 2008 to 2014, PARP allocated funds for the creation of 2,730 enterprises that develop new e-services. Efficiency of this public support is the focus of this paper; however, there exist no simple means to measure and assess it. Analysis takes advantage of different metrics that can be applied to a numerous set of web pages. The main finding of the paper is that the scheme produced a negative value in terms of its effectiveness, thus raising an issue of rationality of public intervention in Internet-based e-services sector. In comparison with other papers dealing with various subsidy schemes, we did not assume a priori that the subsidy outlays would bring positive effect, allowing for unrestricted assessment of the results obtained in the scheme.