This paper evaluates the effect of subsidies to employment maintenance on the probability of mature-age workers staying in the firm. Implementing a quasi-experimental design provided by changes in Spanish labor market regulations, we are able to estimate that the end of subsidies had a small though statistically significant and negative impact on workers’ firm attachment rate. Our results show that a 1 pp. increase in the worker’s cost translates into a 0.11 pp. increase in the cumulative probability of the worker separating from the firm in the next five months. This effect is mainly driven by workers with relatively less seniority in the firm, who present lower dismissal costs; and by workers in low-skill jobs, for which the wage productivity gap seems to negatively evolve with age. In terms of a cost-benefit analysis, we document that the previous higher rate of job maintenance was achieved at a disproportionate cost, and therefore the elimination of the subsidy resulted in in Social Security savings larger than foregone wages.

本文评估了维持就业补贴对成熟工人留在公司的可能性的影响。通过实施西班牙劳动力市场法规变化提供的准实验设计，我们可以估计，补贴的终止对工人的公司依从率有很小的影响，但在统计上具有显着的负面影响。我们的结果表明，工人成本的每增加1个百分点，就意味着该工人在未来五个月内从公司离职的累积概率增加了0.11个百分点。这种影响主要是由在公司中资历相对较低的工人造成的，他们的解雇成本较低；以及从事低技能工作的工人，其工资生产率差距似乎随着年龄的增长而出现负增长。在成本效益分析方面，