ABSTRACT Governments have developed small loan programmes with a reduced interest rate to decrease unemployment in Iran. Using longitudinal, firm-level data from 2005 to 2010 in Iran, this study examines the effect of one Iranian province’s loan programme on employment based on two different methods of evaluating causal effects. The first method applies a difference-in-difference fixed effects matching estimator to estimate the employment effect of the programme. The second method applies the generalized propensity score to estimate the impact of the amount of a loan on employment. The results from the first method suggest that the loan programme has a positive and significant effect on the employment of treated firms. The results from the second method suggest that the estimated employment effects increase with the amount of the loan, whereas there is a decrease in the marginal effects of an additional amount of loan.

中文翻译：

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小额贷款计划对微型和小型企业就业的影响：来自伊朗一个省的证据

摘要政府已制定了降低利率的小额贷款计划，以减少伊朗的失业率。本研究使用2005年至2010年伊朗的纵向，企业一级的数据，基于两种不同的因果效应评估方法，考察了一个伊朗省贷款计划对就业的影响。第一种方法应用差异差异固定效果匹配估计量来估计该计划的就业效果。第二种方法使用广义倾向评分来估计贷款金额对就业的影响。第一种方法的结果表明，贷款计划对处理过的公司的就业产生了积极而显着的影响。第二种方法的结果表明，估计的就业效果随着贷款额的增加而增加，