Evaluación de políticas públicas con métodos cuasi-experimentalesuna aplicación a las políticas activas de empleo en la Comunidad Valenciana

  1. Vila, José 1
  2. Gómez, Yolanda 2
  3. Martínez, Juan 3
  4. Cervera-Ferri, José Luis 2
  1. 1 Universidad de Valencia, ERI-CES, IDAL y DevStat.
  2. 2 DevStat
  3. 3 Servicio Valenciano de Empleo y Formación
Journal:
Cuadernos económicos de ICE

ISSN: 0210-2633 2340-9037

Year of publication: 2020

Issue Title: ECONOMÍA DEL COMPORTAMIENTO

Issue: 99

Pages: 11-24

Type: Article

DOI: 10.32796/CICE.2020.99.7006 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openOpen access editor

More publications in: Cuadernos económicos de ICE

Sustainable development goals

Abstract

This article presents a comparative study of two methodologies for measuring the impact of public policies: the baseline and quasi-experimental methods. Both methods are applied to the evaluation of Active Labour Market Policies implemented in the Valencian Community during the period 2012-2015. The application of both methods to the same set of policies allows us to quantify a phenomenon (that is usually cited in the literature, but scarcely empirically validated) such as the degree of confusion between the effects of a policy and those of the evolution of its environment associated with the use of the baseline method. The results of this analysis show that, in some cases, more than two thirds of the impact measured through baseline indicators is actually attributable to variations in the environment and not to the evaluated policy. As a consequence, the results of this article show the dangers of approaching policy evaluation from a baseline perspective and the convenience of resorting to alternative methods on an experimental basis.

Bibliographic References

  • Athey, S., & Imbens, G. W. (2017). The state of applied econometrics: Causality and policy evaluation. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 3-32.
  • Bédécarrats, F., Guérin, I., & Roubaud, F. (2018). The gold standard for randomised evaluations: from discussion of method to political economy (Working Papers CEB 15-009). Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
  • Real Decreto-ley 3/2011, de medidas urgentes para la mejora de la empleabilidad y la reforma de las políticas activas de empleo. Boletin Oficial del Estado, núm. 43, de 19 de diciembre de 2011, pp. 19240 a 19260.
  • Caliendo, M., & Schmidl, R. (2016). Youth unemployment and active labor market policies in Europe. IZA Journal of Labor Policy, 5(1), 1.
  • Grossman, J., & Mackenzie, F. J. (2005). The randomized controlled trial: gold standard, or merely standard? Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 48(4), 516-534.
  • Lowndes, V., Marsh, D., & Stoker, G. (Eds.). (2017). Theory and methods in political science. Macmillan International Higher Education.
  • McDermott, R. (2002). Experimental methodology in political science. Political Analysis, 10(4), 325-342.
  • Mueller, C. E., & Gaus, H. (2017). Quasi-experimental comparison group designs for social policy evaluation. In Handbook of Social Policy Evaluation (pp 38-56). Edward Elgar Publishing.
  • Vooren, M., Haelermans, C., Groot, W., & van den Brink, H. M. (2019). The Effectiveness of Active Labour Market Policies: A Systematic Meta-Analysis. https://doi.org/10.1111/ joes.12269
  • White, H., & Sabarwal, S. (2014). Quasi-Experimental Design and Methods: Methodological Briefs-Impact Evaluation No. 8. https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/753-quasi-experimental-design-and-methodsmethodological-briefs-impact-evaluation-no.html