Activation policies to promote self-sufficiency among recipients of welfare and other types of benefits are becoming more common in many welfare states. We evaluate a law change in Norway making welfare receipt conditional on participation in an activation program for all welfare recipients...

The paper evaluates the distributional effects on earnings and income of requiring young welfare recipients to fulfill conditions related to work and activation. It exploits within-social insurance office variation in policy arising from a geographically staggered reform in Norway. The reform...

Does paid employment during high school and college displace the time students spend in educational activities? Most enrolled college students in the US now work in paid jobs, almost half of whom work 25 or more hours per week. An economic approach suggests that students consider the tradeoffs...

This paper investigates the impact of alternative economic opportunities for the youth in consolidating positive peace. Using data from randomized control trial from a cash-for-work program for unskilled youngsters, with no opportunities in the labor market, we capture the causal effect of...

The aim of this paper is to illustrate how gaining a greater understanding of young people's values can contribute to the design of more effective educational policies in urban marginal neighbhourhoods using the capability approach as a normative framework of analysis. It is based on fieldwork...

Young highly educated workers developed in the 70 s and 80 s a preference for working in larger cities. As a consequence highly educated young workers in 1990 were over-represented in cities, in spite of the lower wage premium they earned for working in crowded metropolitan areas if compared to...