How long and how much? Learning about the design of wage subsidies from policy changes and discontinuities

Employment and wage subsidies are used to combat long-term unemployment, yet there is little research to guide the design of such programs. Discontinuities and changes in the design and implementation of wage subsidies under the Swedish New Start Jobs-policy allow us to study effects of both subsidy rate and subsidy duration. We find that wage subsidies have substantial effect on job-finding rates for those eligible. The effect is stronger for larger subsidies and more than doubles as the length of the subsidy doubles. Although employment drops as subsidies expire, the probability of being employed remains higher for workers finding subsidized employment also after the expiry of the employment subsidies.