Tuesday 7 August 2012

Do Hiring Subsidies Reduce Unemployment Among Older Workers? evidence from natural experiments

an article by Bernhard Boockmann (Institute for Applied Economic Research (IAW)), Thomas Zwick (Ludwig Maximilians University Munich), Andreas Ammermüller (Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (BMAS)) and Michael Maier (University of Mannheim) published in Journal of the European Economic Association Volume 10 Issue 4 (August 2012)

Abstract

We estimate the effects of hiring subsidies for older workers on transitions from unemployment to employment in Germany.

Using a natural experiment, our first set of estimates is based on a legal change extending the group of eligible unemployed persons. A subsequent legal change in the opposite direction is used to validate these results.

Our data cover the population of unemployed jobseekers in Germany and was specifically made available for our purposes from administrative data.

Consistent support for an employment effect of hiring subsidies can only be found for women in East Germany. Concerning other population groups, firms’ hiring behaviour is hardly influenced by the programme and hiring subsidies mainly lead to deadweight effects.

JEL classifications: J64, H24, C31


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