Contenu du sommaire : Conférences Évaluation des politiques publiques

From an initial amount of more than €10 billion in 2013, the Competitiveness and Employment Tax Credit (CICE) amounted to nearly €20 billion p.a. as from 2014. This article endeavours to evaluate the effects of this substantial, widespread, and weakly targeted aid, in 2013 and 2014. We have relied on an exhaustive dataset that matches corporate tax and accounting sources from INSEE, the DGFiP and the ACOSS. The CICE causal effect is identified by looking at differences in intensity of the level of the tax credit rate. This effect is measured using double and triple difference panel data regressions with instrumental variables. The main conclusion of this study is the weakness of the effects that we highlight. Despite its substantial scale, the CICE had little apparent impact on companies' earnings or job creations. Our ex post evaluation of the CICE's impact points to an effect on employment that is one-half the average expected effects calculated in ex ante evaluations. It also points to a cost per job created that is four times higher than in the most pessimistic evaluations of the effects of reduced social security contributions.

The ex post evaluation presented here endeavours to measure the potential effects of the CICE pre-financing mechanism on preserving jobs due to fewer company failures in 2013 and 2014. The econometric analysis is backed by exhaustive data from INSEE and the use of propensity score matching methods (Kernel, five nearest neighbours, and Caliper). The results indicate that the pre-financed firms could have destroyed around 2,500 jobs (the effects range from approximately 900 to 4,000), if all else being equal, they had not received pre-financing. This effect only applies to firms with between 10 and 100 employees and only for 2013. Thus, the results of this study do not show a significant effect for very small firms (between 2 and 9 employees) or for firms with more than 100 employees. The positive effect of pre-financing on safeguarding jobs in 2013 can be regarded as the upper end of the job preservation range, as a failed company may be forced out of the market.

Blue collar territories are rather unconducive to women's employment; it all depends on the presence of local industries that are intensive in female labour. For given population density and local share of blue collar women, these territories have much lower female employment rates. This link is analysed in detail: in particular, the hypothesis of a spatial mismatch unfavourable to female employment is examined. The analysis, successively in cross-section and panel, is conducted on census data for the years 2006-2012. In cross-section, once adjusted for confounders and spatial interdependencies, the relation of interest (between the share of blue collar and women's employment) is reduced but remains very significant. The results of the panel analysis suggest that two-thirds of this is a long-term link compatible with a spatial mismatch scenario.

For about fifteen years, public authorities have been rolling out broadband in rural areas which do not attract private operators because of their lack of profitability. These public investments are carried out by a desire to ensure territorial equity, but also to stimulate the economic attractiveness of these territories. This paper analyses whether rolling out broadband in rural areas fosters company creations. More specifically, using a difference-in-differences propensity score matching estimator, we evaluate the impact of the public programme “Auvergne Très Haut Débit” on the creation of new businesses in rural areas. Estimation results indicate that broadband development has mainly increased company creations in three economic sector groups: food and accommodation services; public administration, education, human health, and social work activities; and other services. Negative effects are estimated on real estate. These effects are identified for rural areas that are well-endowed with natural amenities or that have benefited from a substantial broadband rollout.

Using the wave 2008 of an administrative panel database (the Échantillon Interrégimes des Retraités), we quantify the effects of the French pension reform act of 1993 on Social Security Wealth (SSW) for pensioners affiliated to the main base pension scheme which covers private sector workers, namely the Caisse nationale d'assurance vieillesse des travailleurs salariés. This indicator enables us to estimate the effects on lifetime wealth derived from pension rights of delayed retirement and pension penalty on incomplete career resulting from the increase in the required contribution length to obtain a full pension with the reform. We show that pension penalty has a negative effect on SSW for all pensioners, including both men and women of the first cohorts of retirees exposed to this reform i.e. those born between 1934 and 1943. The reduction in SSW due to this penalty is higher for men than for women. However, delayed retirement has a positive effect for men and a negative one for women. For men, the increase in SSW due to delayed retirement is cancelled out on average by pension penalty. For women, the decrease in SSW due to pension penalty is mitigated by raising the retirement age. In addition, the consequences of this reform are not uniform along the sample distribution of SSW, with the pension penalty having a high and negative impact on the lowest levels of SSW and a delayed retirement which does not fully offset this adverse effect in this part of the population of retirees.