Effectiveness of Government Interventions at Labour Markets — The Case of Women and Youth in Serbia

Abstract

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of active labour market policies on two largest vulnerable groups at Serbian labour market — women and youth. By means of adapting methodology of other authors we concentrate on in-depth empirical research within the target groups to determine what policies bring most gains. Moreover, by using econometric matched pair design methodology we have undertaken a microevaluation of several different ALMP used in Serbia with a goal of obtaining precise information on the difference in effects among measures. The results that we have achieved are to a certain extent surprising, showing that widely utilised matching methodology can be altered and improved. On the other hand, we found that women and youth perform better than average in effectiveness of active labour market policies.

Keywords: women and youth at labour markets, ALMP, evaluation, matching model

JEL Classification: J08, J21, J18, J68