How effective are hiring subsidies to reduce long-term unemployment among prime-aged jobseekers? Evidence from Belgium

Sam Desiere and Bart Cockx

Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium from Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

Abstract: Hiring subsidies are widely used to create (stable) employment for the long-term unemployed. This paper exploits the abolition of a hiring subsidy targeted at long-term unemployed jobseekers over 45 years of age in Belgium to evaluate its effectiveness in the short and medium run. Based on a triple difference methodology the hiring subsidy is shown to increase the job finding rate by 13% without any evidence of spill-over effects. This effect is driven by a positive effect on individuals with at least a bachelor’s degree. However, the hiring subsidy mainly created temporary short-lived employment: eligible jobseekers were not more likely to find employment that lasted at least twelve consecutive months than ineligible jobseekers.

Keywords: hiring subsidies; long-term unemployment; prime-aged jobseekers; triple difference; temporary help agencies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H22 J08 J18 J23 J38 J64 J65 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2021-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-isf and nep-lab
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Downloads: (external link)
http://wps-feb.ugent.be/Papers/wp_21_1025.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: How Effective Are Hiring Subsidies to Reduce Long-Term Unemployment among Prime-Aged Jobseekers? Evidence from Belgium (2021)
Working Paper: How effective are hiring subsidies to reduce long-term unemployment among prime-aged jobseekers? Evidence from Belgium (2021)
Working Paper: How Effective Are Hiring Subsidies to Reduce Long-Term Unemployment among Prime-Aged Jobseekers? Evidence from Belgium (2021)
Working Paper: How effective are hiring subsidies to reduce long-term unemployment among prime-aged jobseekers? Evidence from Belgium (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rug:rugwps:21/1025

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