Do Start-up Subsidies for the Unemployed Affect Participants' Well-being?

Do Start-up Subsidies for the Unemployed Affect Participants' Well-being?
Author: Marco Caliendo
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2019
Genre:
ISBN:

Download Do Start-up Subsidies for the Unemployed Affect Participants' Well-being? Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

We estimate the long-term effects of start-up subsidies (SUS) for the unemployed on subjective outcome indicators of well-being, as measured by the participants' satisfaction in different domains. This extends previous analyses of the current German SUS program ("Gründungszuschuss") that focused on objective outcomes – such as employment and income – and allows us to make a more complete judgment about the overall effects of SUS at the individual level. This is especially important because subsidizing the transition into self-employment may have unintended adverse effects on participants' well-being due to its risky nature and lower social security protection, especially in the long run. Having access to linked administrative-survey data providing us with rich information on pre-treatment characteristics, we base our analysis on the conditional independence assumption and use propensity score matching to estimate causal effects within the potential outcomes framework. We find long-term positive effects on job satisfaction but negative effects on individuals' satisfaction with their social security situation. Further findings suggest that the negative effect on satisfaction with social security may be driven by negative effects on unemployment and retirement insurance coverage. Our heterogeneity analysis reveals substantial variation in effects across gender, age groups and skill levels. The sensitivity analyses show that these findings are highly robust.

Regional Effect Heterogeneity of Start-Up Subsidies for the Unemployed

Regional Effect Heterogeneity of Start-Up Subsidies for the Unemployed
Author: Marco Caliendo
Publisher:
Total Pages: 43
Release: 2013
Genre:
ISBN:

Download Regional Effect Heterogeneity of Start-Up Subsidies for the Unemployed Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Recent microeconometric evaluation studies have shown that start-up subsidies for unemployed individuals are an effective policy tool to improve long-term employment and income prospects of participants, in particular compared to other active labor market programs (e.g. training, job search assistance or job creation schemes). What has not been examined yet are the potentially heterogeneous effects of start-up programs across regional labor markets. Labor demand side restrictions in areas with relatively bad labor market conditions generally increase entries into start-up programs as job offers are limited and starting an own business is an opportunity to leave unemployment. However, the survival of firms in deprived areas is also lower, such that the overall effect remains an empirical question.We use a combination of administrative and survey data and observe participants in two distinct start-up programs in Germany for five years after start-up as well as a control group of unemployed who did not enter these programs. We add information on unemployment rates and GDP per capita at the labor agency district level to distinguish regional labor markets. Using propensity score matching methods we find supportive evidence that the founding process and development of businesses as well as program effectiveness is influenced by prevailing economic conditions at start-up.

New Evidence on Long-term Effects of Start-up Subsidies

New Evidence on Long-term Effects of Start-up Subsidies
Author: Marco Caliendo
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2019
Genre:
ISBN:

Download New Evidence on Long-term Effects of Start-up Subsidies Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The German start-up subsidy (SUS) program for the unemployed has recently undergone a major make-over, altering its institutional setup, adding an additional layer of selection and leading to ambiguous predictions of the program's effectiveness. Using propensity score matching (PSM) as our main empirical approach, we provide estimates of long-term effects of the post-reform subsidy on individual employment prospects and labor market earnings up to 40 months after entering the program. Our results suggest large and persistent long-term effects of the subsidy on employment probabilities and net earned income. These effects are larger than what was estimated for the pre-reform program. Extensive sensitivity analyses within the standard PSM framework reveal that the results are robust to different choices regarding the implementation of the weighting procedure and also with respect to deviations from the conditional independence assumption. As a further assessment of the results' sensitivity, we go beyond the standard selection-on-observables approach and employ an instrumental variable setup using regional variation in the likelihood of receiving treatment. Here, we exploit the fact that the reform increased the discretionary power of local employment agencies in allocating active labor market policy funds, allowing us to obtain a measure of local preferences for SUS as the program of choice. The results based on this approach give rise to similar estimates. Thus, our results indicating that SUS are still an effective active labor market program after the reform do not appear to be driven by "hidden bias".

Subsidized Start-Ups Out of Unemployment

Subsidized Start-Ups Out of Unemployment
Author: Marco Caliendo
Publisher:
Total Pages: 42
Release: 2015
Genre:
ISBN:

Download Subsidized Start-Ups Out of Unemployment Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Offering unemployed individuals a subsidy to become self-employed is a widespread active labor market policy strategy. Previous studies have illustrated its high effectiveness to help participants escaping unemployment and improving their labor market prospects compared to other unemployed individuals. However, the examination of start-up subsidies from a business perspective has only received little attention to date. Using a new dataset based on a survey allows us to compare subsidized start-ups out of unemployment with regular business founders, with respect to not only personal characteristics but also business outcomes. The results indicate that previously unemployed entrepreneurs face disadvantages in variables correlated with entrepreneurial ability and access to capital. 19 months after start-up, the subsidized businesses experience higher survival, but lag behind regular business founders in terms of income, business growth and innovation. Moreover, we show that expected deadweight losses related to start-up subsidies occur on a (much) lower scale than usually assumed.

Subsidizing Job Creation in the Great Recession

Subsidizing Job Creation in the Great Recession
Author: Sagiri Kitao
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
Total Pages: 22
Release: 2010-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1437934609

Download Subsidizing Job Creation in the Great Recession Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Analyzes the effects of various labor market policies on job creation, job destruction, and employment. The equilibrium model is calibrated to capture labor market conditions at the end of 2009, including the unemployment, inflow, and outflow rates by workers of different educational attainment. The authors consider the equilibrium effects of a hiring subsidy, a payroll tax reduction, and an employment subsidy. They find that a hiring subsidy and a payroll tax deduction, as in the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act, can stimulate job creation in the short term, but can cause a higher equilibrium unemployment rate in the long term. Employment subsidies succeed in lowering the unemploy. rate permanently, but the policy entails high fiscal costs. Illus.

Start-up Subsidies for the Unemployed

Start-up Subsidies for the Unemployed
Author: Martin Weißenberger
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre:
ISBN:

Download Start-up Subsidies for the Unemployed Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Start-up incentives targeted at unemployed individuals have become an important tool of the Active Labor Market Policy (ALMP) to fight unemployment in many countries in recent years. In contrast to traditional ALMP instruments like training measures, wage subsidies, or job creation schemes, which are aimed at reintegrating unemployed individuals into dependent employment, start-up incentives are a fundamentally different approach to ALMP, in that they intend to encourage and help unemployed individuals to exit unemployment by entering self-employment and, thus, by creating their own jobs. In this sense, start-up incentives for unemployed individuals serve not only as employment and social policy to activate job seekers and combat unemployment but also as business policy to promote entrepreneurship. The corresponding empirical literature on this topic so far has been mainly focused on the individual labor market perspective, however. The main part of the thesis at hand examines the new start-up subsidy ("Gründungszuschuss") in...