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...

This paper estimates the effect of a major education reform on the intergenerational income mobility in Finland. The Finnish comprehensive school reform of 1972-1977 replaced the old two-track school system with a uniform nine-year comprehensive school and significantly reduced the degree of...

Using employer-employee data covering the whole Swedish economy over a uniquely long time period from 1986 to 2002, we examine how job flows and worker flows have been distributed both on an aggregate level and across educational levels. We find that job and worker flows vary by educational...

The matching method for treatment evaluation does not balance selective unobserved differences between treated and non-treated. We derive a simple correction term if there is an instrument that shifts the treatment probability to zero in specific cases. Policies with eligibility restrictions,...

To examine the macro economic effects of government tax and punishment policies, this paper develops a three-sector general quilibrium model featuring matching frictions, heterogenous abilities and an informal sector with tax evasion. The choice of education is determined endogenously. Job...

In this paper experimental data from three Swedish demonstration programmes in 2004 are used to study pre-programme effects of active placement efforts. In one of the experiments, targeted towards a broad group of UI receivers, arranged job-search activities in groups combined with increased...

Instrumental variable estimation requires untestable exclusion restrictions. With policy effects on inidividual 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...

We investigate the effect of conseling and monitoring on the individual transition rate to employment. We theoretically analyze these policies in a job search model with two search channels and endogenous search effort. In the empirical analysis we use unique administrative and survey data...

Labor market programs may affect unemployed individuals' behavior before they enroll. Such ex ante effects are hard to identify without model assumptions. We develop a novel method that relates self-reported perceived treatment rates and job-search behavioral outcomes, like the reservation wage,...

Labor market programs may affect unemployed individuals’ behavior before they enroll. Such ex ante effects may differ according to ethnic origin. We apply a novel method that relates self-reported perceived treatment rates and job search behav­ioral outcomes, such as the reservation wage or...