IHS Seminar: Max Kasy: Piloting new social safety nets: Evaluation of a job guarantee program and of a basic income program

Ideas for new social safety nets are generating much debate.
Two leading contenders are job guarantee programs and (universal) basic income programs.
In this talk I will discuss the evaluation of two pilot programs in Austria and Germany which have recently started.
The first is a job-guarantee program in Marienthal (Gramatneusidl) implemented by the AMS in Austria. The second is a basic income pilot implemented by "Mein Grundeinkommen" in Germany.
I will focus on the study design and evaluation challenges. I look forward to discussions about the design of follow-up surveys, as well as about ways to integrate these evaluations into the broader theoretical, conceptual, and policy debates.

Slides: download here

The IHS seminar will take place online as an MS-Teams event. Interested parties can register by mail to event(at)ihs.ac.at and will receive a link to participate.


Max Kasy is an associate professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Oxford and a fellow at IHS. He works on machine-learning theory, statistical decision theory, and economic inequality and taxation.