This paper investigates how precisely short-term, job-search oriented training programs as opposed to long-term, human capital intensive training programs work. We evaluate and compare their effects on time until job entry, stability of employment, and earnings. Further, we examine the...

This paper studies a program that extends the maximum duration of unemployment benefits from 30 weeks to 209 weeks. Interestingly, this program is targeted to individuals aged 50 years or older, living in certain eligible regions in Austria. In the evaluation, I use sharp discontinuities in...

Long-term unemployment reached unprecedented levels in Spain in the wake of the Great Recession and it still affects around 57% of the unemployed. We document the sources that contributed to the rise in long-term unemployment and analyze its persistence using state-of-the-art duration models. We...

This paper develops new estimates of flows into and out of unemployment that allow for unobserved heterogeneity across workers as well as direct effects of unemployment duration on unemployment-exit probabilities. Unlike any previous paper in this literature, we develop a complete dynamic...

This paper explores the role that unobserved heterogeneity within an observed category plays in the dynamics of disaggregate unemployment and in the cross-sectional differences across individuals of the duration of unemployment spells. The distribution of unobserved heterogeneity is...

We identify the causal effect of lump-sum severance payments on non-employment duration in Norway by exploiting a discontinuity in eligibility at age 50. We find that a severance payment worth 1.2 months’ earnings at the median lowers the fraction re-employed after a year by seven percentage...

In this paper I test the capital accumulation conjecture that is used to rationalize return migration decisions in the context of immigrants in Germany and examine how labor market outcomes influence return migration decisions, with particular attention to selection in these outcomes in return...

In this paper, I test the savings accumulation conjecture that is used to rationalize return migration decisions in the context of immigrants in Germany. Using cross-country and time variation in purchasing power parity, I distinguish between the two competing capital accumulation conjectures...

This study tests the hysteresis hypothesis of unemployment in fourteen OECD countries by examining the stationarity of unemployment rates using several panel unit root tests. Empirical results show that the hysteresis hypothesis cannot be rejected for majority of the OECD when the tests are...