Suchergebnisse

This dataset was the basis for several studies. It includes individuals who are registered as unemployed at a Swiss regional employment agency in the year 2003. The data contains further information from different unemployment insurance databases (AVAM/ASAL) and social security records (AHV). Additionally, caseworkers employed in the period of 2003 to 2004 were surveyed through a written questionnaire in December 2004. The questionnaire asked about the caseworker's aims and strategies and information about the regional employment agency.

This paper presents a meta-analysis of recent microeconometric evaluations of active labor market policies. Our sample consists of 199 program estimates drawn from 97 studies conducted between 1995 and 2007. In about one-half of these cases we have both a short-term impact estimate (for a one-year post-program horizon) and a medium-term estimate (two-year horizon). We characterize the program estimates according to the type and duration of the program, the characteristics of the participants, and the evaluation methodology. Heterogeneity in all three dimensions affects the likelihood that an impact estimate is significantly positive, significantly negative, or statistically insignificant. Comparing program types, subsidized public sector employment programs have the least favorable impact estimates. Job search assistance programs have relatively favorable short-run impacts, whereas classroom and on-the-job training programs tend to show better outcomes in the medium-run than the short-run. Programs for youths are less likely to yield positive impacts than untargeted programs, but there are no large or systematic differences by gender. Methodologically, we find that the outcome variable used to measure program effectiveness matters. Evaluations based on registered unemployment durations are more likely to show favorable short-term impacts. Controlling for the outcome measure, and the type of program and participants, we find that experimental and non-experimental studies have similar fractions of significant negative and significant positive impact estimates, suggesting that the research designs used in recent non-experimental evaluations are unbiased.

This paper presents a meta-analysis of recent microeconometric evaluations of active labor market policies. Our sample consists of 199 program estimates drawn from 97 studies conducted between 1995 and 2007. In about one-half of these cases we have both a short-term impact estimate (for a one-year post-program horizon) and a medium-term estimate (two-year horizon). We characterize the program estimates according to the type and duration of the program, the characteristics of the participants, and the evaluation methodology. Heterogeneity in all three dimensions affects the likelihood that an impact estimate is significantly positive, significantly negative, or statistically insignificant. Comparing program types, subsidized public sector employment programs have the least favorable impact estimates. Job search assistance programs have relatively favorable short-run impacts, whereas classroom and on-the-job training programs tend to show better outcomes in the medium-run than the short-run. Programs for youths are less likely to yield positive impacts than untargeted programs, but there are no large or systematic differences by gender. Methodologically, we find that the outcome variable used to measure program effectiveness matters. Evaluations based on registered unemployment durations are more likely to show favorable short-term impacts. Controlling for the outcome measure, and the type of program and participants, we find that experimental and non-experimental studies have similar fractions of significant negative and significant positive impact estimates, suggesting that the research designs used in recent non-experimental evaluations are unbiased.

This paper presents a meta-analysis of recent microeconometric evaluations of active labor market policies. Our sample consists of 199 program estimates drawn from 97 studies conducted between 1995 and 2007. In about one-half of these cases we have both a short-term impact estimate (for a one-year post-program horizon) and a medium-term estimate (two-year horizon). We characterize the program estimates according to the type and duration of the program, the characteristics of the participants, and the evaluation methodology. Heterogeneity in all three dimensions affects the likelihood that an impact estimate is significantly positive, significantly negative, or statistically insignificant. Comparing program types, subsidized public sector employment programs have the least favorable impact estimates. Job search assistance programs have relatively favorable short-run impacts, whereas classroom and on-the-job training programs tend to show better outcomes in the medium- run than the short-run. Programs for youths are less likely to yield positive impacts than untargeted programs, but there are no large or systematic differences by gender. Methodologically, we find that the outcome variable used to measure program effectiveness matters. Evaluations based on registered unemployment durations are more likely to show favorable short-term impacts. Controlling for the outcome measure, and the type of program and participants, we find that experimental and non-experimental studies have similar fractions of significant negative and significant positive impact estimates, suggesting that the research designs used in recent non-experimental evaluations are unbiased.

"I develop an agent-based computational economics (ACE) model with which I evaluate the aggregate impact of labor market policies. The findings are that governmentfinanced training measures increase the outflow rate from unemployment to employment. Although the overall effect is positive this effect is achieved by reducing the outflow rate for those who do not receive subsidies. Furthermore, the outflow rate would have been downward-biased had one supposed a matching function that is exogenous to policies." (author's abstract)

Labor market policies succeed or fail at least in part depending on how well they reflect or account for behavioral responses. Insights from behavioral economics, which allow for realistic deviations from standard economic assumptions about behavior, have consequences for the design and functioning of labor market policies. We review key implications of behavioral economics related to procrastination, difficulties in dealing with complexity, and potentially biased labor market expectations for the design of selected labor market policies including unemployment compensation, employment services and job search assistance, and job training.

Active labor-market policies (ALMPs) have developed significantly over the past two decades across Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, with substantial cross-national differences in terms of both extent and overall orientation. The objective of this article is to account for cross-national variation in this policy field. It starts by reviewing existing scholarship concerning political, institutional, and ideational determinants of ALMPs. It then argues that ALMP is too broad a category to be used without further specification, and it develops a typology of four different types of ALMPs: incentive reinforcement, employment assistance, occupation, and human capital investment. These are discussed and examined through ALMP expenditure profiles in selected countries. The article uses this typology to analyze ALMP trajectories in six Western European countries and shows that the role of this instrument changes dramatically over time. It concludes that there is little regularity in the political determinants of ALMPs. In contrast, it finds strong institutional and ideational effects, nested in the interaction between the changing economic context and existing labor-market policies.

A review essay on books by: Margaret Weir, Politics and Jobs: The Politics of Employment Policy in the United States (Princeton: Princeton U Press, 1992); Gary Mucciaroni, The Political Failure of Employment Policy, 1945-1982 (U of Pittsburgh Press, 1990); Udo Sautter, Three Cheers for the Unemployed: Government and Unemployment before the New Deal (New York: Cambridge U Press, 1991); Thomas Janoski, The Political Economy of Unemployment: Active Labor Market Policy in West Germany and the United States (Berkeley & Los Angeles: U of California Press, 1990 [see listings in IRPSPPD No. 30]). Weir analyzes the Great Society initiatives of the 1960s to illustrate the labor policy focus on welfare vs training needs. Labor policy in the 1960s is characterized as remedial & directed at altering worker characteristics rather than changing demands for labor. Labor policy constraints imposed by institutional limitations, ie, the vertical division of powers of federalism, political tensions, the linkage between race & welfare programs, are discussed. Mucciaroni examines the labor policy initiatives of the mid-1940s through mid-1960s, which are generally characterized as underfunded, piecemeal, remedial, & inadequate to address the problem at hand. The failure of the initiatives is found in institutional constraints, & the complexity of ideas, institutions, & interests involved in the policy-making & implementation process. Sautter examines US labor policy at the state level in the six decades prior to the 1930s. During much of that period, unemployment was viewed as a personal problem. It was not until the 1920s that unemployment became viewed as a structural problem, an important change in perspective that legitimized government intervention during the Great Depression. Janoski presents a comparative analysis of labor market policy in the US & West Germany. Compared to West Germany, US labor market policy is characterized by a paucity of programs, weak political support for labor market initiatives, the linkage of labor policy with remedial & welfare priorities, limited power of the US Labor Dept to promote Keynesian employment programs, & congressional obstructionism. D. Generoli