IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/izalpo/v4y2015i1p1-2510.1186-s40173-015-0034-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Employment subsidies, informal economy and women’s transition into work in a depressed area: evidence from a matching approach

Author

Listed:
  • Manuela Deidda
  • Adriana Di Liberto
  • Marta Foddi
  • Giovanni Sulis

Abstract

We analyze the effects of an ALMP for disadvantaged workers implemented in a depressed area of Italy. Using propensity-score matching, we find that a) the employment subsidy had a positive effect for participants on both the probability of finding a job and income, b) the outcome of the policy was more positive for women, and c) the program was more effective for older and less-educated female workers. Using data on previous contacts between workers and firms and on informal channels for job search activity, we ultimately explore the role of the program in promoting the transition from informal to salaried employment. Copyright Deidda et al.; licensee Springer. 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Manuela Deidda & Adriana Di Liberto & Marta Foddi & Giovanni Sulis, 2015. "Employment subsidies, informal economy and women’s transition into work in a depressed area: evidence from a matching approach," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-25, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:izalpo:v:4:y:2015:i:1:p:1-25:10.1186/s40173-015-0034-9
    DOI: 10.1186/s40173-015-0034-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1186/s40173-015-0034-9
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1186/s40173-015-0034-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gerfin, Michael & Lechner, Michael & Steiger, Heidi, 2005. "Does subsidised temporary employment get the unemployed back to work? Aneconometric analysis of two different schemes," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(6), pages 807-835, December.
    2. Paolo Naticchioni & Silvia Loriga, 2011. "Short and Long Term Evaluations of Public Employment Services in Italy," Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik), Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 57(3), pages 201-229.
    3. Gerard J. van den Berg & Bas van der Klaauw, 2006. "Counseling And Monitoring Of Unemployed Workers: Theory And Evidence From A Controlled Social Experiment," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 47(3), pages 895-936, August.
    4. Di Liberto, Adriana, 2008. "Education and Italian regional development," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 94-107, February.
    5. David Card & Jochen Kluve & Andrea Weber, 2010. "Active Labour Market Policy Evaluations: A Meta-Analysis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(548), pages 452-477, November.
    6. Fougère, Denis & Pradel, Jacqueline & Roger, Muriel, 2009. "Does the public employment service affect search effort and outcomes?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 846-869, October.
    7. A. Smith, Jeffrey & E. Todd, Petra, 2005. "Does matching overcome LaLonde's critique of nonexperimental estimators?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 125(1-2), pages 305-353.
    8. Lorenzo Cappellari & Konstantinos Tatsiramos, 2010. "Friends’ Networks and Job Finding Rates," DISCE - Quaderni dell'Istituto di Economia dell'Impresa e del Lavoro ieil0059, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    9. Michael Lechner & Blaise Melly, 2007. "Earnings Effects of Training Programs," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2007 2007-28, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.
    10. Bosch, Nicole & van der Klaauw, Bas, 2012. "Analyzing female labor supply — Evidence from a Dutch tax reform," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 271-280.
    11. Michael Gerfin & Michael Lechner, 2002. "A Microeconometric Evaluation of the Active Labour Market Policy in Switzerland," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(482), pages 854-893, October.
    12. repec:adr:anecst:y:2008:i:91-92:p:17 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Adriano Paggiaro & Enrico Rettore & Ugo Trivellato, 2009. "The Effect of a Longer Eligibility to a Labour Market Programme for Dismissed Workers," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 23(1), pages 37-66, March.
    14. Killingsworth, Mark R. & Heckman, James J., 1987. "Female labor supply: A survey," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & R. Layard (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 103-204, Elsevier.
    15. Schneider, Friedrich, 2012. "The Shadow Economy and Work in the Shadow: What Do We (Not) Know?," IZA Discussion Papers 6423, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Caliendo, Marco & Künn, Steffen, 2011. "Start-up subsidies for the unemployed: Long-term evidence and effect heterogeneity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(3), pages 311-331.
    17. Giovanni Sulis, 2012. "Gender wage differentials in Italy: a structural estimation approach," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(1), pages 53-87, January.
    18. Marco Caliendo & Sabine Kopeinig, 2008. "Some Practical Guidance For The Implementation Of Propensity Score Matching," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(1), pages 31-72, February.
    19. Annette Bergemann & Gerard J. Van Den Berg, 2008. "Active Labor Market Policy Effects for Women in Europe - A Survey," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 91-92, pages 385-408.
    20. Rajeev H. Dehejia & Sadek Wahba, 2002. "Propensity Score-Matching Methods For Nonexperimental Causal Studies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(1), pages 151-161, February.
    21. Leigh, Andrew, 2010. "Informal care and labor market participation," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 140-149, January.
    22. Kluve, Jochen & Lehmann, Hartmut & Schmidt, Christoph M., 1999. "Active Labor Market Policies in Poland: Human Capital Enhancement, Stigmatization, or Benefit Churning?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 61-89, March.
    23. Barbara Sianesi, 2004. "An Evaluation of the Swedish System of Active Labor Market Programs in the 1990s," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 133-155, February.
    24. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2004. "The Role of Social Capital in Financial Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(3), pages 526-556, June.
    25. Heckman, James J. & Lalonde, Robert J. & Smith, Jeffrey A., 1999. "The economics and econometrics of active labor market programs," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 31, pages 1865-2097, Elsevier.
    26. Schneider, Friedrich, 2011. "The Shadow Economy and Shadow Economy Labor Force: What Do We (Not) Know?," IZA Discussion Papers 5769, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    27. D. Gotteland, 2005. "Editorial," Post-Print halshs-00103100, HAL.
    28. Marco Caliendo & Steffen Künn, 2015. "Getting back into the labor market: the effects of start-up subsidies for unemployed females," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 28(4), pages 1005-1043, October.
    29. Massimiliano Bratti & Emilia Del Bono & Daniela Vuri, 2005. "New Mothers’ Labour Force Participation in Italy: The Role of Job Characteristics," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 19(s1), pages 79-121, December.
    30. Núria Rodríguez-Planas & Benus Jacob, 2010. "Evaluating active labor market programs in Romania," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 38(1), pages 65-84, February.
    31. Tito Boeri & Pietro Garibaldi, "undated". "Shadow Activity and Unemployment in a Depressed Labor Market," Working Papers 177, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    32. Ponzo, Michela & Scoppa, Vincenzo, 2010. "The use of informal networks in Italy: Efficiency or favoritism?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 89-99, January.
    33. Austin Nichols, 2007. "Causal inference with observational data," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 7(4), pages 507-541, December.
    34. Martin Huber & Michael Lechner & Andreas Steinmayr, 2015. "Radius matching on the propensity score with bias adjustment: tuning parameters and finite sample behaviour," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 49(1), pages 1-31, August.
    35. D. Gotteland, 2005. "Editorial," Post-Print halshs-00094555, HAL.
    36. A. D. Roy, 1951. "Some Thoughts On The Distribution Of Earnings," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 135-146.
    37. James J. Heckman & Hidehiko Ichimura & Petra Todd, 1998. "Matching As An Econometric Evaluation Estimator," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 65(2), pages 261-294.
    38. Rafael Lalive & Jan C. Van Ours & Josef Zweimüller, 2008. "The Impact of Active Labour Market Programmes on The Duration of Unemployment in Switzerland," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(525), pages 235-257, January.
    39. Tatsiramos, Konstantinos & Cappellari, Lorenzo, 2011. "Friends’ networks and job finding rates," ISER Working Paper Series 2011-21, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    40. Núria Rodríguez‐Planas, 2010. "Channels through which Public Employment Services and Small Business Assistance Programmes Work," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 72(4), pages 458-485, August.
    41. A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), 2000. "Handbook of Health Economics," Handbook of Health Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    42. Sascha O. Becker & Andrea Ichino, 2002. "Estimation of average treatment effects based on propensity scores," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 2(4), pages 358-377, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Patrick Kline & Enrico Moretti, 2013. "Place Based Policies with Unemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 238-243, May.
    2. d'Agostino, Giorgio & Patriarca, Fabrizio & Pieroni, Luca & Scarlato, Margherita, 2020. "The perverse effects of hiring credits as a place-based policy: Evidence from Southern Italy," MPRA Paper 102240, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Binnur Balkan & Yusuf Soner Baskaya & Semih Tumen, 2014. "Evaluating the Impact of the Post-2008 Employment Subsidy Program in Turkey," Working Papers 1414, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey.
    4. Yasemin Dildar, 2020. "Targeting Women’s Employment: Do Employment Subsidies Work? Evidence from Turkey," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 52(1), pages 5-25, March.
    5. Halit Basbuga & Hatip Kitapci, 2020. "The Effects of the Incentive for Young and Female Employment Regulated By Law No. 6111 and Macroeconomic Variables on Employment, Informal Employment, and," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 10(5), pages 178-186.
    6. Halit Basbuga & Hakan Kitapci & Enes Cengiz Oguz & Yusuf Elkoca, 2022. "Active Labour Market Policies and Macroeconomic Variables on Employment, Informal Employment and Income Effects: The case of Turkey," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 12(2), pages 72-83, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Caliendo, Marco & Mahlstedt, Robert & Mitnik, Oscar A., 2017. "Unobservable, but unimportant? The relevance of usually unobserved variables for the evaluation of labor market policies," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 14-25.
    2. Alessio Brown & Johannes Koettl, 2015. "Active labor market programs - employment gain or fiscal drain?," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-36, December.
    3. Sandra Cavaco & Denis Fougère & Julien Pouget, 2013. "Estimating the effect of a retraining program on the re-employment rate of displaced workers," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 44(1), pages 261-287, February.
    4. Marco Caliendo & Stefan Tübbicke, 2020. "New evidence on long-term effects of start-up subsidies: matching estimates and their robustness," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(4), pages 1605-1631, October.
    5. McGuinness, Seamus & O'Connell, Philip J. & Kelly, Elish & Walsh, John R., 2011. "Activation in Ireland: An Evaluation of the National Employment Action Plan," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number RS20, June.
    6. Dettmann, E. & Becker, C. & Schmeißer, C., 2011. "Distance functions for matching in small samples," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 55(5), pages 1942-1960, May.
    7. Schmidl, Ricarda, 2015. "The Effectiveness of Early Vacancy Information in the Presence of Monitoring and ALMP," IZA Discussion Papers 9575, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Marco Caliendo & Stefan Tübbicke, 2019. "Do Start-Up Subsidies for the Unemployed Affect Participants’ Well-Being? A Rigorous Look at (Un-)Intended Consequences of Labor Market Policies," CEPA Discussion Papers 14, Center for Economic Policy Analysis.
    9. Lechner, Michael & Wunsch, Conny, 2013. "Sensitivity of matching-based program evaluations to the availability of control variables," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 111-121.
    10. L. Behrenz & L. Delander & J. Månsson, 2016. "Is Starting a Business a Sustainable way out of Unemployment? Treatment Effects of the Swedish Start-up Subsidy," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 37(4), pages 389-411, December.
    11. Jones A.M & Rice N, 2009. "Econometric Evaluation of Health Policies," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 09/09, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    12. Muller, Paul & van der Klaauw, Bas & Heyma, Arjan, 2017. "Comparing Econometric Methods to Empirically Evaluate Job-Search Assistance," IZA Discussion Papers 10531, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Lutz Bellmann & Marco Caliendo & Stefan Tübbicke, 2018. "The Post‐Reform Effectiveness of the New German Start‐Up Subsidy for the Unemployed," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 32(3), pages 293-319, September.
    14. Seonho Shin, 2022. "Evaluating the Effect of the Matching Grant Program for Refugees: An Observational Study Using Matching, Weighting, and the Mantel-Haenszel Test," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 43(1), pages 103-133, March.
    15. Emil Mihaylov, 2011. "Evaluation of Subsidized Employment Programs for Long-Term Unemployed in Bulgaria," Economic Studies journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 3, pages 136-167.
    16. Lechner, Michael & Wiehler, Stephan, 2007. "Does the Order and Timing of Active Labor Market Programs Matter?," IZA Discussion Papers 3092, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Abdellatif Chatri & Khadija Hadef & Naima Samoudi, 2021. "Micro-econometric evaluation of subsidized employment in morocco: the case of the "Idmaj" program," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 55(1), pages 1-13, December.
    18. Núria Rodríguez‐Planas, 2010. "Channels through which Public Employment Services and Small Business Assistance Programmes Work," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 72(4), pages 458-485, August.
    19. Paul Muller & Bas van der Klaauw & Arjan Heyma, 2020. "Comparing econometric methods to empirically evaluate activation programs for job seekers," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(5), pages 526-547, August.
    20. Paolo Naticchioni & Silvia Loriga, 2011. "Short and Long Term Evaluations of Public Employment Services in Italy," Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik), Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 57(3), pages 201-229.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    C14; C83; J64; J16; Employment subsidies; Female labor-force participation; Evaluation; Informal economy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C14 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General
    • C83 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Survey Methods; Sampling Methods
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:izalpo:v:4:y:2015:i:1:p:1-25:10.1186/s40173-015-0034-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.