The objective of this paper is to estimate the impacts of medium and long term participation in microfinance programs. It utilises a new, large and unique panel dataset collected from treatment and control households from 1997 to 2005. The data enables us to identify continuing participants in the program as well as newcomers and leavers. We employ different estimation strategies including trip...

This paper examines the impact of being an innovator on firm productivity in Taiwan. Using a panel of 48794 firms observed over the 1997-2003 period, and distributed across 23 industries, we compute TFP by estimating Translog production functions with conventional K, L, E, M inputs. We evaluate the impact of being an innovator on TFP using propensity score matching. The rationale is that, over ...

This paper is the first paper to present findings evaluating the consequences for employees of full and partial privatization using difference-in-differences combined with propensity score matching. We find: (1) partial privatization causes job creation in contrast to full privatization, which destroys jobs, (2) full privatization causes higher labor productivity improvement than partial privat...

The paper evaluates the effect of the FAMEX export promotion program in Tunisia on the export performance of beneficiary firms using firm-level data. Propensity-score matching difference-indifference and weighted least squares estimates suggest that beneficiaries expand at the intensive and the extensive margin (markets and products). However, this expansion is short-lived for total exports. Ou...

This paper investigates the impact of the introduction of new restrictive permanent contracts on the perceived job security of workers in Spain. The perceived job security is strongly influenced by the characteristics of individuals and their distribution within groups. Comparing heterogeneous groups could make the traditional DID estimator biased. To address this issue I combined the propensit...

We evaluate the effectiveness of regional targeting in China’s large-scale poverty alleviation program begun in 1986 by analyzing a panel data set of all counties in China for the period 1981-95. Estimates of models of poor county designation and poverty fund allocation and newly defined targeting gap and targeting error measures show that political factors have affected targeting and that leak...

Imposed Benefit Sanctions and the Unemployment-toEmployment Transition: The German Experience We analyze the effect of imposed benefit sanctions on the unemployment-to-employment transition of unemployed people entitled to unemployment compensation on the basis of register data from the German Federal Employment Agency. We combine propensity score matching with a discrete-time hazard rate model...

This paper investigates the effect of CFO gender on corporate tax aggressiveness. Focusing on firms that experience a male-to-female CFO transition, the paper compares those firms’ degree of tax aggressiveness during the preand posttransition periods. Using the probability of tax sheltering, the predicted unrecognized tax benefits, and the discretionary permanent book-tax differences to measure...

This paper estimates the effect of receiving a need-based grant on the performance of university students in Italy. We perform both cross-sectional (between-universities) and within-universities propensity score matching analyses in order to evaluate the effect of grants on several students’ performance indicators as first year credits, dropout, and study efficiency. The findings suggest that f...