We evaluate the presence of effects from joining one of four active labour market programs in Romania in the late 1990s compared to the no-program state. Using rich survey data and propensity score matching, we find that three programs (training and retraining, small business assistance, and...

This paper investigates the labour market and welfare changes experienced by enlarged-EU migrants before and after 2007. For this purpose, we briefly review the Spanish socio-economic institutional background, as well as its migration policy towards enlarged-EU citizens. Then we discuss the...

This paper focuses on the determinants of the labor market situation of young people in developed countries and the developing world, with a special emphasis on the role of vocational training and education policies. We highlight the role of demographic factors, economic growth and labor market...

While much of the literature on immigrants' assimilation has focused on countries with a large tradition of receiving immigrants and with flexible labor markets, very little is known on how immigrants adjust to other types of host economies. With its severe dual labor market, and an...

Using the 2007 Encuesta Nacional de Immigración (ENI), we find that male migrants follow a similar labor and legal assimilation pattern in Spain regardless of their nationality (with Romanians faring worse in terms of legal status but better in terms of employment status at arrival). Among...

Much of the literature on immigrants' cash-welfare benefits use has focused on countries with a large tradition of receiving immigrants and with well established Welfare states. This paper contributes to this literature by analyzing differences in cash-welfare benefits receipt between immigrants...

Most EaP migrants in Spain come from Ukraine, followed by, to a much lesser extent, Moldavia, Armenia, and Georgia. Relative to other migrants, they are those who most recently arrived to Spain. Despite being considerably more educated than natives and other migrants, they are less likely to...

With young people among the big losers of the recent financial crisis, vocational education and training (VET) is often seen as the silver bullet to the problem of youth joblessness. This paper provides a better understanding of VET around the world, dealing with three types of vocational...

An important immigration policy question is to identify the best criteria to select among potential migrants. At least two methodological problems arise: the host country's immigration policy regime endogeneity, and immigrants' unobserved heterogeneity. To address the first problem, we focus in...

Using a differences-in-differences approach and controlling for individual unobserved heterogeneity, we evaluate the impact of a 1999 law that granted all workers with children younger than 7 years old protection against a layoff if the worker had previously asked for a work-week reduction due...