This paper examines labor market conditions and public employment policies in the United States during what some are calling the Great Recession. We document the dramatic labor market changes that rapidly unfolded when the rate of gross domestic product growth turned negative, from the end of...

This paper argues that more rigorous evaluations of local economic development policies are feasible. Programs that aid selected small firms can be rigorously evaluated using an experimental approach, without excluding firms from assistance, by randomly assigning some firms to receive more...

The study estimates the employment effect of vocational training programs for the unemployed in urban Russia. The results of propensity score matching indicate that training programs had a non-negative overall effect on the program participants relative to non-participants.