Project number: K135486

One labour market policy tool – popular across several OECD countries and CEE alike – is to provide start-up subsidies to assist unemployed workers in setting up their own business. This instrument may be especially beneficial for people whose work is undervalued in paid employment (e.g. the low skilled, or those with no work experience,) or who face discrimination (for example the Roma, or women looking for part-time jobs) . Our research will evaluate effectiveness of such programs on very rich administrative data from linked government sources in Hungary, using some state of the art econometric techniques .We believe our results will prove not only scientifically valuable, but offer direct relevance to labour market policy. Evaluating the effectiveness of start-up subsidies contribute to the development of better programs and thus decrease long-term unemployment, the risk of poverty and social exclusion.