Suchergebnisse

Instrumental variable estimation requires untestable exclusion restrictions. With policy effects on individual outcomes, there is typically a time interval between the moment the agent realizes that he may be exposed to the policy and the actual exposure or the announcement of the actual treatment status. In such cases there is an incentive for the agent to acquire information on the value of the IV. This leads to violation of the exclusion restriction. We analyze this in a dynamic economic model framework. This provides a foundation of exclusion restrictions in terms of economic behavior. The results are used to describe policy evaluation settings in which instrumental variables are likely or unlikely to make sense. For the latter cases we analyze the asymptotic bias. The exclusion restriction is more likely to be violated if the outcome of interest strongly depends on interactions between the agent's effort before the outcome is realized and the actual treatment status. The bias has the same sign as this interaction effect. Violation does not causally depend on the weakness of the candidate instrument or the size of the average treatment effect. With experiments, violation is more likely if the treatment and control groups are to be of similar size. We also address side-effects. We develop a novel economic interpretation of placebo effects and provide some empirical evidence for the relevance of the analysis.

Unemployment insurance systems include monitoring of unemployed workers and punitive sanctions if job search requirements are violated. We analyze the effect of sanctions on the ensuing job quality, notably on wage rates and hours worked, and we examine how often a sanction leads to a lower occupational level. The data cover the Swedish population over 1999-2004. We estimate duration models dealing with selection on unobservables. We use weighted exogenous sampling maximum likelihood to deal with the fact the data register is large whereas observed punishments are rare. We also develop a theoretical job search model with monitoring of job offer rejection vis-a-vis monitoring of job search effort. The observation window includes a policy change in which the punishment severity was reduced. We find that the hourly wage and the number of hours are on average lower after a sanction, and that individuals move more often to a lower occupational level, incurring human capital losses. Monitoring offer rejections is less effective than monitoring search effort.

Unemployment insurance systems include monitoring of unemployed workers and punitive sanctions if job search requirements are violated. We analyze the effect of sanctions on the ensuing job quality, notably on wage rates and hours worked, and we examine how often a sanction leads to a lower occupational level. The data cover the Swedish population over 1999-2004. We estimate duration models dealing with selection on unobservables. We use weighted exogenous sampling maximum likelihood to deal with the fact that the data register is large whereas observed punishments are rare. We also develop a theoretical job search model with monitoring of job offer rejection versus monitoring of job search effort. The observation window includes a discontinuous policy change in which the punishment severity was reduced. We find that the hourly wage and the number of hours are lower after a sanction, and that individuals move more often to a lower occupational level, incurring human capital losses. Monitoring offer rejections is less effective than monitoring search effort.

The vocational employment training program is the most expensive training program in Sweden and a cornerstone of labor market policy. We analyze its causal effects on the individual transition rate from unemployment to employment by exploiting variation in the timing of treatment and outcome, dealing with selectivity on unobservables. We demonstrate the appropriateness of this approach in our con-text by studying the enrollment process. We develop a model allowing for duration dependence and unobserved heterogeneity (leading to spurious duration dependence) in the treatment effect itself, and we prove non-parametric identification. The data cover the population and include multiple unemployment spells for many individuals. The results indicate a large significantly positive effect on exit to work shortly after exiting the program. The effect at the individual level diminishes after some weeks. When taking account of the time spent in the program, the effect on the mean unemployment duration is small.

We survey the recent literature on the effects of active labor market policies on individual labor market outcomes like employment and income, for adult female individuals without work in European countries. We consider skilltraining programs, monitoring and sanctions, job search assistance, and employment subsidies. The results are remarkably uniform across studies. We relate the results to the relevant level of female labor force participation.