Employment of young and older workers : three policy evaluations

The dissertation has the goal of providing a better understanding on the effectiveness of specific active labour market policies that aim at integration of young and older workers. The first Chapter evaluates the effectiveness of the 2003 reform of the Italian apprenticeship regime. This reform raised the age-eligibility and revised the training component. The different timing of the implementation of the reform in the Italian regions and sectors is exploited. To estimate the treatment effect (ATT) of the apprentices in the reformed regime (compared to the old regime), the Covariate Balancing Propensity Score estimator is implemented (CBPS - Imai and Ratkovic, 2014) employing a large set of covariates. The inflow sample of about 18,000 apprentices hired in 2007 is drawn from administrative data of the Social Security Institutions (INPS). Four years after hiring, the reform induced an increase in the transition rate to permanent jobs in the same firm and boosted the average wage of the apprentices. Finally, by a DiD estimator on the LFS, it is found that the higher diffusion of the apprenticeship among the youth becoming eligible is offset by a reduction of other temporary jobs. Granting the eligibility to the youth aged 25-29 also encouraged their transition from non-employment to employment. The research related to the second and the third Chapters assesses the effectiveness of two Belgian federal policies to boost the employment rate of the older population. In this research we rely on an endogenous stratified sample of administrative data containing about 244,000 individuals (aged between 52 and 61 years old in 2002) with their employment history since 1957. The second Chapter assesses the impact of a Belgian employers’ Social Security Contributions reduction for workers older than 58. The analysis is performed on multiple repeated cross-sections even if panel data are available, to account for age-varying confounding factors. We use a CDiD estimator (Heckman et al., 1997) and when needed a trend-adjusted version of it (Wolfers, 2006). To facilitate the integration of endogenous sampling weights in this estimator, we implement it as an Inverse Probability Weighting (IPW) estimator, which we extend to allow for multiple cross-sections in the before and after periods. We find small positive short-run impacts on working time and larger ones on the employment rate, but only for employees at high risk of leaving to early retirement. The wage is not affected. In a Cost-Benefit-Analysis, we estimate that during the 1.25 years after its introduction the subsidy imposed a net monthly cost of €3,700€ per saved job to Society. Had the subsidy been targeted to sectors where early retirement schemes are widely used, Society would instead have gained 400€ per saved job. The third Chapter evaluates the impact of the Belgian part-time Time-Credit scheme for older workers. The policy measure allows older workers to reduce their working time by 20% (or 50%) with the goal of postponing their retirement decision and possibly improve their work-life balance. Workers receive a lump-sum in-work benefit of about € 215 (€ 385), granting an average income replacement of 90% (66%) of the full-time wage. We assess the ATT on the survival in employment and we control for selection on observable (IPW) by using their whole employment history. As control units can enter the treatment in later periods, we take into account the dynamic treatment selection (Vikström, 2014). Our estimates indicate a positive employment effect in the short-run followed by a negative impact after four years with insignificant health effects. The policy does not pass the Cost-Benefit-Analysis test

Player dismissal and full-time results in the UEFA Champions League and Europa League

This study is the first to estimate the effects of the sending-off of a player on the full-time results in international club soccer. To this end, we analyze data of more than 2,000 recent matches in the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League. We find that, when home teams receive a red card, it harms their goal scoring and victory probabilities. By contrast, a red card for away teams can have a positive, negative, or neutral effect for them, depending on the timing of the player dismissal

Permanente Loonkostenverlagingen voor oudere werknemers : effectief instrument voor behoud van tewerkstelling en voor uitstel van brugpensioen?

We onderzochten de effecten van een permanente loonlastenverlaging voor oudere mannelijke werknemers op (het behoud van) tewerkstelling, arbeidsduur en uurloon. We voerden de analyse uit op een steekproef van ruim 150.000 mannen geboren tussen 1941 en 1950. We vonden kleine positieve effecten op de arbeidsduur en grotere op het behoud van de tewerkstelling, maar dit enkel voor werknemers met een hoge kans op uitstroom naar brugpensioen. Het loon werd niet beïnvloed. We vonden ook evidentie dat het voordeel voor de oudere werknemers gedeeltelijk ten koste gaat van de klein beetje jongere groep die niet voor de lastenverlaging in aanmerking kwam

Does work experience mitigate discrimination?

We test whether ethnic discrimination is heterogeneous by job candidates' work experience. Fictitious applications are sent to vacancies. We find significant discrimination when candidates have no or little experience but no unequal treatment when they have twenty years of experience

Het tijdskrediet eindeloopbaan : verlengt het de beroepsloopbaan?

In deze studie onderzoeken we hoe deeltijds werk gekoppeld aan tijdskrediet in de private sector de kans beïnvloedt om op het einde van de loopbaan aan het werk te blijven . We houden rekening met selecte deelname aan het tijdskrediet door te controleren voor een uitgebreide set van individuele kenmerken en indicatoren van de volledige arbeidsgeschiedenis van werknemers. We vinden dat het tijdskrediet de kans om aan het werk te blijven gedurende de eerste twee (vier) jaar significant verhoogt. Wanneer de begunstigden van het tijdskrediet recht krijgen op een vervroegd pensioen, keert dit positieve effect echter en treden de begunstigden vroeger uit de arbeidsmarkt dan wanneer ze geen tijdskrediet hadden opgenomen. Deze resultaten suggereren dat het tijdskrediet initieel de balans tussen werk en vrije tijd herstelt, maar dat het uiteindelijk de hechting met de arbeidsmarkt doet verliezen. Deeltijds gaan werken op het einde van de loopbaan verlaagt ook licht de kans op ziekteverzuim, maar dit effect is statistisch niet significant verschillend van nul. Een kosten-baten analyse geeft aan dat de maatschappelijke kosten over het algemeen groter zijn de baten voor de samenleving

Working time reductions at the end of the career : do they prolong the time spent in employment?

In this paper, we study the effects on the survival rate in the employment of a scheme that facilitates gradual retirement through working time reductions. We use information on the entire labour market career and other observables to control for the selection and take dynamic treatment assignment into account. We also estimate a competing risks model considering different (possibly selective) pathways to early retirement. We find that participation in the scheme prolongs employment during the first 2 (4) years for men (women). However, when individuals become eligible for early retirement, the effect reverses. This suggests that TC initially improves the work-life balance, but that it eventually decreases labour market attachment and signals to employers a preference for early retirement. The institutional environment in which part-time participants are entitled to full-time pensions reinforces the latter process. Participation in TC seems also to generate a slight, statistically insignificant, improvement in health

Timed to say goodbye : does unemployment benefit eligibility affect worker layoffs?

Este trabajo estudia el papel que desempeñan las condiciones de acceso a la prestación por desempleo sobre la tasa de despidos. Para ello, se explota la variación cuasi experimental en los criterios de elegibilidad para el subsidio de desempleo en Italia, a través de una estimación de diferencias en diferencias. Los resultados destacan que la probabilidad de despido aumenta alrededor del 12 % en el momento en que los trabajadores alcanzan la elegibilidad para el subsidio de desempleo, y ese efecto persiste durante 16 semanas. Estos resultados se mantienen utilizando diferentes estrategias de estimación, y se explican, en gran parte, por las relaciones laborales que empezaron después de la Gran Recesión, en el sur de Italia y en empresas pequeñas. Razonamos que la principal fuerza impulsora de este efecto es el riesgo moral por parte de las empresasWe study how unemployment benefit eligibility affects the layoff exit rate by exploiting quasiexperimental variation in eligibility rules in Italy. By using a difference-indifferences estimator, we find an instantaneous increase of about 12% in the layoff probability when unemployment benefit eligibility is attained, which persists for about 16 weeks. These findings are robust to different identifying assumptions and are mostly driven by jobs started after the onset of the Great Recession, in the South and for small firms. We argue that the moral hazard from the employer’s side is the main force driving these layoff

About the de Almeida-Thouless line in neural networks

In this work we present a rigorous and straightforward method to detect the onset of the instability of replica-symmetric theories in information processing systems, which does not require a full replica analysis as in the method originally proposed by de Almeida and Thouless for spin glasses. The method is based on an expansion of the free-energy obtained within one-step of replica symmetry breaking (RSB) around the RS value. As such, it requires solely continuity and differentiability of the free-energy and it is robust to be applied broadly to systems with quenched disorder. We apply the method to the Hopfield model and to neural networks with multi-node Hebbian interactions, as case studies. In the appendices we test the method on the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick and the Ising P-spin models, recovering the AT lines known in the literature for these models, as a special limit, which corresponds to assuming that the transition from the RS to the RSB phase can be obtained by varying continuously the order parameters. Our method provides a generalization of the AT approach, which does not rely on this limit and can be applied to systems with discontinuous phase transitions, as we show explicitly for the spherical P-spin model, recovering the known RS instability line