Abstract:
The public work (PW) programmes have been the major active labour market policy tools since 2011 in Hungary. Majority of the public workers were inactive before the programme. Due to this the labour supply considerably increased in those district, which got significantly more subsidy from the central government for PW programmes. Large portion of the public work funds was distributed to those districts, which were below the country average development level. I estimate the effect of public work programmes on the private sector wage using regression discontinuity design. According to my estimations the average private sector wage level is lower on average by 9% between 2013-2017 in those district-occupational cells, where the average wage is below the country median. In the mean time in these district-occupational cells the private sector employment is 4% higher. This gives a (-0.43) elasticity of labour demand, which is in-line with the previous estimates for Hungary.