Theories of market failures and targeting motivate the promotion of entrepreneurship training programs and generate testable predictions regarding heterogeneous treatment effects from such programs. Using a large randomized evaluation in the United States, we find no strong or lasting effects on...

This paper studies the effects of job creation tax credits (JCTCs) enacted by U.S. states between 1990 and 2007 to gain insights about fiscal foresight (alterations of current behavior by forwardlooking agents in anticipation of future policy changes). Nearly half of the states adopted JCTCs...

This paper reviews selected fiscal policy initiatives undertaken by US states to encourage job creation and innovation. We begin with a discussion of some general considerations about the design of tax policies summarized in a tax policy design table. Four policies are reviewed: job creation tax...

We estimate the causal effects of a pandemic-era wage subsidy program in Canada on job losses and business closures. Our estimates use administrative microdata and a regression discontinuity strategy to estimate the effects of marginal changes in the wage subsidy rate. The estimated net wage...

There is a large literature on the role infrastructure plays in economic development, but few papers document the causal effect of infrastructure on the sustainability of natural resources. We examine the effect of the arrival of two new national highways on ground water levels in a small...

This paper investigates whether incentives generated by public policies contribute to motherhood penalties. Specifically, we study the consequences of subsidized small jobs, the German Minijobs, which are frequently taken up by first-time mothers upon labor market return. Using a combination of...

In the Great Recession most OECD countries used short-time work (publicly subsidized working time reductions) to counteract a steep increase in unemployment. We show that short-time work can actually save jobs. However, there is an important distinction to be made: While the rule-based component...

This paper shows that outsourcing of parts of the workforce in unionized firms leads to wage moderation and as long as the share of the outsourced workforce is not too large, this wage-moderation effect on domestic employment outweighs the direct substitution effect so that domestic employment...

By how much does an increase in operating effectiveness of a public employment agency (PEA) and a reduction of unemployment benefits reduce unemployment? Using a recent labour market reform in Germany as background, we find that an enhanced effectiveness of the PEA explains about 20% of the...

Workfare proposals concentrate on the work incentives for welfare recipients, thus focusing on the labor supply side. This paper analyzes the effects workfare has on labor demand when the labor market is unionized. As workfare reduces the number of recipients of public financial assistance, a...