Disentangling Treatment Effects of Polish Active Labour Market Policies: Evidence from Matched Samples

This paper estimates causal effects of two Polish active labor market policies - training and intervention works - on employment probabilities. Using data from the 18th wave of the Polish Labor Force Survey we discuss three stages of an exact-matching-within-calipers procedure and show how the method succeeds in balancing relevant covariates. The approach is supported by estimating propensity scores for a post-match sample. We implement a conditional difference-in-differences estimator of treatment effects based on individual trinomial sequences of pre-treatment labor market status. Our findings suggest that training raises employment probability, while intervention works displays a negative treatment effect. Furthermore we find that appropriate subdivision of the matched sample for conditional treatment effect estimation can add considerable insight to the interpretation of results.