How agricultural subsidies shape local employment: Evidencefrom the French support policies for mountain areas

How agricultural subsidies shape local employment: Evidencefrom the French support policies for mountain areas | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article How agricultural subsidies shape local employment: Evidencefrom the French support policies for mountain areas Yrabo Dabou, Julie Le Gallo, Lionel Védrine This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7580130/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Under Review Version 1 posted 11 You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Do place-based farm subsidies reshape rural labour markets beyond agriculture? We estimate the causal impact of France’s Less Favoured Areas (LFA) on municipal employment over 1962–1990. Combining entropy balancing with staggered difference-in-differences on 23,685 municipalities, we differentiate the effects on salaried versus self-employed farmlabour and also estimate geographic spillovers and sectoral multipliers. LFA municipalitiesgain about 10% salaried agricultural jobs but lose roughly 18% self-employment as farms merge and expand. Positive spillovers extend to neighbouring municipalities, treated or not,and multipliers occur in non-farm sectors: industry, trade, and services grow around subsidised areas, while agri-food and construction rise inside them. Treatment heterogeneity shows stronger gains where farms are mid-sized and close to urban centers. By revealing job-creating but composition-shifting and geographical and sectoral outward-spreading effects,our study highlights that a policy designed to offset natural handicaps also reconfigures locallabour markets and local linkages. JEL Classification: C21, Q18, R12 Rural employment Spillovers Entropy Balancing Less Favoured Areas Full Text Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Supplementary Files Appendixeng.tex Cite Share Download PDF Status: Under Review Version 1 posted Editorial decision: Revision requested 18 Dec, 2025 Reviews received at journal 01 Dec, 2025 Reviewers agreed at journal 14 Nov, 2025 Reviews received at journal 06 Nov, 2025 Reviews received at journal 26 Oct, 2025 Reviewers agreed at journal 06 Oct, 2025 Reviewers agreed at journal 27 Sep, 2025 Reviewers invited by journal 25 Sep, 2025 Editor assigned by journal 13 Sep, 2025 Submission checks completed at journal 13 Sep, 2025 First submitted to journal 10 Sep, 2025 You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. 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Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-7580130","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":525548186,"identity":"17518042-ef36-4c3a-bd86-f61b44f37bf8","order_by":0,"name":"Yrabo 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