The labor market reform enacted in Spain in December 2021 introduced unprecedented restrictions on the use of temporary contracts with the aim of making open-ended employment the norm rather than the exception. This paper examines the reform’s impact on the quality of contracts and the labor market outcomes of young labor market entrants using administrative records from the Continuous Sample of Working Lives (MCVL). We identify the causal effects of the reform through a difference-in-differences design that exploits persistent pre-reform differences across provinces in the prevalence of temporary employment. To this end, we construct a novel measure of temporary employment that adjusts for differences in the sectoral composition of employment across provinces. We show that the reform led to a near-complete convergence in the probability that entrants obtained an open-ended contract in their first job. However, this substantial improvement in contractual stability translated into only modest convergence in subsequent labor market outcomes. We demonstrate that this apparent discrepancy is the result of two developments. Firstly, part-time and intermittent contracts account for over 80
Active labor market programs (ALMPs) are widely used to boost employment prospects for individuals at risk of social exclusion, though evidence on their effectiveness remains mixed. While most studies focus on single interventions, less is known about the impact of combining multiple ALMPs that may complement each other to enhance both employability and psychological well-being. This paper evaluates the incremental impact of a comprehensive ALMP bundle delivered in partnership with Red Cross Spain to facilitate reinsertion in the labor market. Participants were randomly assigned to a control group with access to Red Cross’s regular services or to a treatment group that received additional interventions, including psychological support, soft skills development, digital literacy, certified professional courses and job search assistance. Using administrative data, we find no significant differential effects of the treatment on employment outcomes immediately after the intervention, or six and twelve months later. However, the program does improve certain outcomes related to employability and personal autonomy. Specifically, it reduces the risk of poor psychological health and enhances frustration tolerance, problem identification, knowledge of available resources and digital skills. Participants also report a higher perceived likelihood of finding a job and use a broader range of job search methods.
We evaluate a holistic reading intervention involving 527 third-grade students in Chilean schools catering to disadvantaged populations. The intervention features an adaptive computer game designed to identify and improve weaknesses in literacy and cognitive skills, and is complemented by a mobile library and advice to parents aimed at fostering student engagement and parental involvement. Leveraging a matched-pair design under the staggered implementation of the intervention, in which we retrospectively match five schools already scheduled to receive the treatment with five schools from the yet-to-be-selected pool, we assess its impacts on both cognitive and socioemotional outcomes. Treated students are 10–30
This essay surveys my research in normative macro-finance, recognized with the XXIII Premio Fundación Banco Sabadell a la Investigación Económica. It reviews contributions to understanding pecuniary externalities, arbitrage and mispricing, corporate taxes and financial transaction taxes, information and learning in financial markets, bank regulation, corrective policies, bankruptcy policy, leverage regulation under belief distortions, optimal monetary policy with heterogeneous agents, and the origins of welfare gains. It also presents ten guiding rules for conducting normative research in financial economics and macroeconomics.
