The Institute for Work, Skills and Training was assigned to evaluate a labor market program aimed at the integration of long-term unemployed individuals aged 50 or older. The integration should have been achieved not only by training and coaching of individuals, but also by building regional networks between labor market stakeholders within a region. To appraise the success of the action undertaken on the regional level in the sense of causal effects, an observational study was used. The experimental-and control-groups were built using propensity score matching. The matching was done using not individual-level data, but data on the regional level because of missing individual data and the aims of the program. The mean growth of the number of employees subject to social insurance contributions over time was chosen as the outcome of the program. The findings are that observational studies are suitable to estimate the causal effects of active labor market programs on the regional (macro) level if individual data are missing or if the aims of the program cannot be observed on the individual level.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.