Competencies, requirements of internationalization and use of non-financial public support

Particularly in times of budget constraints, governments must evaluate carefully the public resources they allocate to support private investments by enterprises. With an Heckman selection model applied on data collected in Portugal, this paper tests which variables affect awareness and use by firms of four non-financial types of internationalization support measures. The results suggest that firms’ competencies positively affect awareness and negatively affect the use of public support. Otherwise, the requirements of the internationalization projects positively affect both the awareness and the use of public support.