Permanent Wage Cost Subsidies for Older Workers: An Effective Tool for Increasing Working Time and Postponing Early Retirement?
46 Pages Posted: 27 Apr 2015
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Permanent Wage Cost Subsidies for Older Workers. An Effective Tool for Increasing Working Time and Postponing Early Retirement?
Abstract
In several OECD countries age-targeted wage subsidies have been introduced to increase the employment of older workers, but evidence on their effectiveness is scarce. This paper examines the effects of a permanent wage cost subsidy in Belgium on the employment rate, working time and hourly wage. We estimate these effects by integrating Inverse Probability Weighting in a, possibly trend-adjusted, Difference-in-Differences of endogenously sampled repeated cross sections. 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.
Keywords: wage cost subsidies, older workers, weighted Difference-in-Differences, endogenous sampling
JEL Classification: J14, C21, J18, J3
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation