IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/has/bworkp/1503.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Evaluating the impact of a well - targeted wage subsidy using administrative data

Author

Listed:
  • Zsombor Cseres-Gergely

    (Institute of Economics, Center for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences)

  • Agota Scharle

    (Budapest Institute)

  • Arpad Foldessy

    (University College London)

Abstract

The paper measures the impact of a wage subsidy for long term unemployed workers, using a large administrative dataset from Hungary. While such subsidies are often promoted as an efficient way to speed up the recovery of the economy or to increase demand for low skilled workers, existing evidence on their employment effects is somewhat inconclusive, especially in the case of transition economies. We examine employment outcomes in various model specifications. Results show a significant impact for men aged over 50, which is driven by the subgroup of those with lower secondary education. The subsidy for jobseekers with at least secondary education and aged over 50 is cost effective for men. We also present some evidence that this is not merely caused by substitution across various sub-groups of jobseekers.

Suggested Citation

  • Zsombor Cseres-Gergely & Agota Scharle & Arpad Foldessy, 2015. "Evaluating the impact of a well - targeted wage subsidy using administrative data," Budapest Working Papers on the Labour Market 1503, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:has:bworkp:1503
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.core.hu/file/download/bwp/bwp1503.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brown, Alessio J.G. & Merkl, Christian & Snower, Dennis J., 2011. "Comparing the effectiveness of employment subsidies," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 168-179, April.
    2. 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.
    3. Maarten Goos & Jozef Konings, 2007. "The Impact of Payroll Tax Reductions on Employment and Wages: A Natural Experiment Using Firm Level Data," LICOS Discussion Papers 17807, LICOS - Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance, KU Leuven.
    4. Betcherman, Gordon & Olivas, Karina & Dar, Amit, 2004. "Impacts of active labor market programs : new evidence from evaluations with particular attention to developing and transition countries," Social Protection Discussion Papers and Notes 29142, The World Bank.
    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. Svraka, András, 2019. "The Effect of Labour Cost Reduction on Employment of Vulnerable Groups — Evaluation of the Hungarian Job Protection Act," Public Finance Quarterly, Corvinus University of Budapest, vol. 64(1), pages 72-92.
    2. Gabriel Machlica, 2017. "Enhancing skills to boost growth in Hungary," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1364, OECD Publishing.
    3. Kevin Hollenbeck, 2015. "Promoting Retention or Reemployment of Workers After a Significant Injury or Illness," Mathematica Policy Research Reports 99caa302888a4be68d16d276c, Mathematica Policy Research.

    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. 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.
    2. Didem Koca, 2022. "Comparative Analysis of the Labor Market Structure and Active Labor Market Policies of G7 Countries and Turkey Between 2000-2020," Journal of Social Policy Conferences, Istanbul University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 0(83), pages 101-140, December.
    3. Oluyemisi Kuku & Peter F. Orazem & Sawkut Rojid & Milan Vodopivec, 2016. "Training funds and the incidence of training: the case of Mauritius," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(3), pages 280-299, June.
    4. Nicola Brandt, 2012. "Reducing Poverty in Chile: Cash Transfers and Better Jobs," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 951, OECD Publishing.
    5. Miguel Baiao & Ilze Buligina, 2021. "Work Experience Led Programs and Employment Attainment," International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), vol. 0(1), pages 180-198.
    6. David E. Card & Pablo Ibarraran & Juan Miguel Villa, 2011. "Building in an Evaluation Component for Active Labor Market Programs: A Practitioner's Guide," SPD Working Papers 1101, Inter-American Development Bank, Office of Strategic Planning and Development Effectiveness (SPD).
    7. Oznur Ozdamar & Eleftherios Giovanis & Cansu Dağlıoğlu & Cemaleddin Gerede, 2021. "The effect of the 2008 employment support programme on young men’s labour market outcomes in Turkey: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 89(3), pages 276-296, June.
    8. Gordon Betcherman & Themrise Khan, 2018. "Jobs for Africa’s expanding youth cohort: a stocktaking of employment prospects and policy interventions," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 8(1), pages 1-20, December.
    9. Arif Mamun & Evan Borkum & Kristen Velyvis & Luke Heinkel & John Middleton, "undated". "The Millennium Challenge Corporation's Vocational Training Activity in Namibia: Evaluation Design Report," Mathematica Policy Research Reports 80d2989ca5c64313afe4bc4fd, Mathematica Policy Research.
    10. Diego Angel-Urdinola & Rene Leon-Solano, 2013. "A reform agenda for improving the delivery of ALMPs in the MENA region," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 2(1), pages 1-25, December.
    11. Kluve, Jochen & Puerto, Susanna & Robalino, David & Romero, José Manuel & Rother, Friederike & Stöterau, Jonathan & Weidenkaff, Felix & Witte, Marc, 2016. "Do Youth Employment Programs Improve Labor Market Outcomes? A Systematic Review," Ruhr Economic Papers 648, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    12. Goulas, Eleftherios & Zervoyianni, Athina, 2018. "Active labour-market policies and output growth: Is there a causal relationship?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 1-14.
    13. World Bank Group, 2015. "Toward Solutions for Youth Employment," World Bank Publications - Reports 23261, The World Bank Group.
    14. 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.
    15. Sinem Kilic Celik & M. Ayhan Kose & Franziska Ohnsorge, 2020. "Subdued Potential Growth: Sources and Remedies," Koç University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum Working Papers 2009, Koc University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum.
    16. Beam, Emily A., 2016. "Do job fairs matter? Experimental evidence on the impact of job-fair attendance," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 32-40.
    17. Sinem Kilic Celik & M. Ayhan Kose & Franziska Ohnsorge, 2023. "Potential Growth Prospects: Risks, Rewards and Policies," CAMA Working Papers 2023-19, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    18. Chakravarty, Shubha & Lundberg, Mattias & Nikolov, Plamen & Zenker, Juliane, 2019. "Vocational training programs and youth labor market outcomes: Evidence from Nepal," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 71-110.
    19. Balavac-Orlic, Merima & Posadas, Josefina, 2023. "One (program) for all or all (programs) for one: Evaluation of the employment program opportunity for all of the federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 47(1).
    20. Angel-Urdinola, Diego F. & Semlali, Amina & Brodmann, Stefanie, 2010. "Non-public provision of active labor market programs in Arab- Mediterranean countries : an inventory of youth programs," Social Protection Discussion Papers and Notes 55673, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    wage-subsidy; evaluation; older workers;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy
    • J68 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Public Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:has:bworkp:1503. 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: Nora Horvath (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iehashu.html .

    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.