Resumen de Microeconometric Evaluation of Public Employment Programmes: Empirical Analysis for Portugal
In order to better understand the impact of Active Labour Market Policies in the Portuguese economy this paper presents an empirical analysis of Public Employment Programmes. These are programmes of direct job creation for unemployed individuals, out of �regular� labour market, directly aimed at improving participants� employment chances by providing work experience and informal training. To measure the impact of the selected programmes, microeconometric evaluation techniques are applied to a representative Portuguese dataset.
The Propensity Score Matching Estimator is the basic non-experimental methodology to address the �evaluation problem� and the results indicate that the programmes under consideration have a strong negative impact on leaving unemployment, both for men and women, thus suggesting that public employment programmes have not been very effective in avoiding the exclusion from the regular labour market.
