Can Hiring Quotas Work? The Effect of the Nitaqat Program on the Saudi Private Sector
研究了沙特Nitaqat计划对私营企业强制雇佣沙特人的配额政策效果，发现该政策虽增加了本地就业，但给企业带来显著成本，导致企业退出率上升、幸存企业总就业下降。
This paper studies the effects of quota-based labor regulations on firms in the context of Saudi Arabia's Nitaqat program, which imposed quotas for Saudi hiring at private firms. I use a comprehensive firm-level administrative dataset and exploit kinks in hiring incentives generated by the quotas to estimate the effects of this policy. I find that the program increased native employment at substantial cost to firms, as demonstrated by increasing exit rates and decreasing total employment at surviving firms. Firms without any Saudi employees at the onset of the program appear to bear most of these costs.