The FBK-Irvapp best paper in Public Policy Evaluation award 2023 goes to Francesco Filippucci

Francesco Filippucci, a young consultant at the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) Department of Economics who recently obtained a PhD in Economics from the Paris School of Economics, has won the first edition of the prize for the Best paper in the field of public policy awarded by Fondazione Bruno Kessler’s Institute for Evaluative Research on Public Policy (FBK-IRVAPP) with the article

‘What Do NEETs Need? The Joint Effect of Active and Passive Labor Market Policies’ 

The paper evaluates the Garantie Jeunes programme, the French equivalent of Italy’s Garanzia Giovani.
These programmes target disadvantaged Not in Employment, Education or Training youths (NEETs) facing difficulties in finding employment and youth unemployment. The French experience provides both for a year of cash transfers and intensive activation measures. The identification strategy exploits the staggered adoption of the program across French departments using a classical event study and a difference-in-differences methodology that extends results in the existing literature.

The results highlight a strong positive joint effect of active and passive policies after youths exit the program. During program enrolment, part-time employment decreases in the first semester – when youths are engaged in activation measures – while in the second semester the drop in employment is mostly due to the passive component of the program. This suggests that cash transfers and lock-in from training reduce youth employment that is largely compensated by the positive effect of activation measures.

Francesco Filippucci will present his work on February 8 to participants of the FBK-IRVAPP International 2023 Advanced School on Impact Evaluation, now in its fifth year, organized by FBK-IRVAPP from January 30 to February 14. The seminar can be followed on FBK-Irvapp’s YouTube channel.

The jury in charge of examining the papers submitted for the prize and selecting the winner consists of the teaching staff of the FBK-IRVAPP 2023 Advanced School on impact evaluation. The members of the jury were impressed by the high quality of the 25 papers received as well as by the relevance of the policy questions they deal with. Selecting a winner has been a tough task.

As for the call, papers were assessed based on two criteria: i) methodological soundness, ii) innovative approach, both in terms of methodology and research question addressed.

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