Una evaluación de impacto del segundo Plan Regional de Empleo de Castilla y León

Resumen:En este trabajo se lleva a cabo una evaluación del Segundo Plan Regional de Empleo de Castilla y León (SPRECyL). Para ello se utiliza la metodología expuesta en Meyer (1995), basada en el enfoque “cuasi-experimental”. Concretamente se estudian los efectos del SPRECyL sobre la tasa de ocupación y desempleo de Castilla y León durante su periodo de vigencia. Esta investigación puede ser de gran utilidad a los responsables de política económica debido a la escasa evaluación de este tipo de políticas y a que aporta una importante información que permite utilizar de forma más eficiente los recursos públicos.Abstract: Introduction Active labor market policies are a tool used by Public Administrations aimed at increasing the level of employment and, at the same time, at reducing the unemployment rate of an economy. For this purpose, regional governments have implemented employment plans to support national actions. In the case of Castile and Leon, the first Regional Employment Plan of Castile and Leon (PRECyL) was carried out in 1998 with a duration of three years. This one was followed by the Second Regional Employment Plan of Castile and Leon (SPRECyL), for the period 2001-2003, and by several subsequent plans to the present. However, as far as the evaluation of these programs is concerned, we have only found a first attempt for the PRECyL (AUTOCITA). All other plans have remained unassessed. From our point of view, it is necessary to continue analyzing the effects of the second plan in order to evaluate its effectiveness adequately. On the one hand, this evaluation will allow us to make an interesting comparison regarding the effects associated with the implementation of the PRECyL. On the other hand, it will reveal to us if the variations in the main indicators of the labor market that we observe in the provinces of Castile and Leon are due to the implementation of the SPRECyL or, on the contrary, can be attributed to the economic situation (which produces effects, in general, for all the Spanish provinces). The key point is that the outcomes obtained in such studies can be very useful for the policy makers. These results let us know their effects on the economic activity at the regional level and, moreover, they make it possible to assess the efficiency of using public funds. Methodology From an applied perspective, the evaluation corresponding to this SPRECyL is implemented through the methodology presented in Meyer (1995), which is based on a "quasi-experimental" approach. Then, the objective is to evaluate the impact of a treatment on a specific population where the “quasi-experiment” is determined exogenously (through a natural phenomenon, a law...), that is, the researcher does not intervene in determining which group has been affected by the treatment and which does not (the latter is what we can call as the control group or the comparison group). In this work in particular, the interest lies in evaluating the effectiveness of a Regional Employment Plan on the labor market of Castile and Leon. Consequently, the treated group here consists of all the provinces of this region that are beneficiaries of the program and the control group is represented by the rest of provinces of the national territory that will not be affected by the treatment previously defined. In order to perform the estimates, we have chosen the econometric technique of "differences in differences", which has been widely used in different fields of economic research (Card and Krueger 1994; Crépon and Kramarz 2002; Sánchez-Mangas and Sánchez-Marcos, 2008; Delgado and Florax, 2015). By using this methodology, we can easily evaluate the results achieved from the public program or policy developed. We only have to compare the results of the treated group (all the provinces of Castile and Leon) with those of the control group (the provinces of the rest of Spain). Thus, the ultimate goal of the study is to measure the impact of the program considered, isolating the effect that other factors can cause. The period considered in this analysis is the one covering 1998-2003. In the first three years (1998, 1999, 2000) the PRECyL was in force, while the last three (2001, 2002, 2003) refer to SPRECyL. In this way, it is possible to examine whether the second plan produces any differential effect on the level of employment or unemployment, beyond those observed with the former one. In addition, it must be taken into account that this is a relative comparison. In Castile and Leon there was already a plan in the first period of analysis and the regions used as control can also have been affected by other actions or policies. Hence, what we want to find out is if the SPRECyL has caused significant results to those observed in the rest of the Spanish provinces during the period contemplated. Main Results Initially, our results point to an increase in the employment rate and a reduction in the unemployment rate, during the years when the SPRECyL was implemented (2.6 and -1.7 percentage points, respectively). Nevertheless, we cannot establish a direct causal relationship between these rates and the SPRECyL. Thus, it is possible that this effect is a consequence of a global trend, common to all the provinces in Spain, not only for the provinces of Castile and Leon (where the SPRECyL acts). Once we introduce other regressors, capturing whether the previous rate variations have occurred in a gradual way, we observe that the effect of the SPRECyL ceases to be significant, which is a signal of their lack of effectiveness. Later, with the application of the “differences in differences” analysis, we observe how the different evolution of Castile and Leon provinces, in comparison with others provinces of Spain, is negative for the case of the employment rate (more precisely 0.6 percentage points). To prove the robustness of our results we have performed different econometric specifications, obtaining similar results. In this case, we can state that the employment rate grew less in Castile and Leon provinces than in the rest of Spain provinces in those years when the SPRECyL was implemented. On the other hand, the results for the unemployment rate point to a similar evolution to the rest of Spanish provinces during the same years. In this case, the diff-in-diff estimates establish that despite maintaining a negative sign, the coefficients are generally not significant. Conclusions The results found from the exploration of the employment and unemployment rates let us draw some interesting conclusions. First of all, the increase observed in the employment rates of the provinces of Castile and Leon during the years of the SPRECyL is lower than the one detected in other provinces not influenced by this plan. Besides, the evolution of the unemployment rate in the provinces of Castile and Leon is very similar to that perceived in the rest of provinces of Spain. As a consequence, the first conclusion that can be depicted, being the most immediate, is the absence of a remarkable impact of the SPRECyL. In other words, it can be said that the increase in the employment rate, as well as the reduction in the unemployment rate, observed in the provinces of Castile and Leon during the three years of the SPRECyL is equally generalizable to the rest of Spanish provinces. As a result, it seems logical to assume that the evolution noted in the labor market of this region may have been due to a favorable trend of the economic situation during the period of interest rather than the implementation of a program or a policy in particular (in our case, the SPRECyL). Finally, it should be indicated that the result achieved here is not new, since it coincides with that found for the first plan, the PRECyL. .