دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی یارانه های دستمزد هدفمند و عملکرد شرکت - الزویر 2018

Abstract

This paper studies how targeted wage subsidies affect the performance of the recruiting firms. Using Swedish administrative data from the period 1998-2008, we show that treated firms substantially outperform other recruiting firms after hiring through subsidies, despite identical pre-treatment performance levels and trends in a wide set of key dimensions. The pattern is less clear from 2007 onwards, after a reform removed the involvement of caseworkers from the subsidy approval process. Overall, our results suggest that targeted employment subsidies can have large positive effects on post-match outcomes of the hiring firms, at least if the policy environment allows for pre-screening by caseworkers.

5 Summary and conclusions

In this paper we study how targeted wage subsidies schemes are related to firm performance. We find that subsidies can have a very positive sustained effect on a range of firm production and productivity measures, including firm size, wage sum, profits, value added and per-worker productivity. This is robustly true in the setting (before 2007) when caseworkers needed to approve all subsidies.

However, the patterns are less robust after 2007 when caseworkers no longer were involved in the allocation process. Instead, results turn much smaller and, with two exceptions, statistically insignificant for subsidies falling under the rules-selection regime. In this period, the impact on firm survival is positive. In addition, treated firms have lower-than-average investments. A possible interpretation of these changed patterns is that caseworkers during the staff-selection regime prevented firms with poor expectations from receiving subsidies, a process which may have reduced the impact on the firm-survival margin if this process kept marginal firms from seeking treatment as a last resort. We try to test for alternative explanations, including those related to the business cycle (although the “Great recession” was quite mild in Sweden) and find no support for the alternative explanations, but we acknowledge that we cannot fully rule out that other factors contributed to the change in responses.