One goal of the public employment service is to facilitate matching between unemployed job seekers and job vacancies; another goal is to monitor job search so as to bring search efforts among the unemployed in line with search requirements. The referral of job seekers to vacancies is one...

We conduct a large-scale field experiment in the German labor market to investigate how information provision affects job seekers' employment prospects and labor market outcomes. Individuals assigned to the treatment group of our experiment received a brochure that informed them about job search...

Since July 2004 the job search effort of long-term unemployed benefit claimants is monitored in Belgium. We exploit the discontinuity in the treatment assignment at the age of 30 to evaluate the effect of a notification sent at least 8 months before job search is verified. The threat of...

This paper studies the role of job search assistance programs in optimal welfare-to-work programs. The analysis is based on a framework, that allows for endogenous choice of benefit types and levels, wage taxes or subsidies, and activation measures such as monitoring and job search assistance...

Hiring subsidies are widely used to create (stable) employment for the long-term unemployed. This paper exploits the abolition of a hiring subsidy targeted at long-term unemployed jobseekers over 45 years of age in Belgium to evaluate its effectiveness in the short and medium run. Based on a...

This paper studies how the potential duration of unemployment benefits affects individuals’ job search behavior and re-employment outcomes. We exploit an unexpected reform of the German unemployment insurance scheme in 2008, which increased the potential benefit duration from 12 to 15 months...

This paper evaluates the effects of policy interventions on sectoral labour markets and the aggregate economy in a business cycle model with search and matching frictions. We extend the canonical model by including capital-skill complementarity in production, labour markets with skilled and...

We investigate how negatively reciprocal traits of unemployed individuals interact with "sticks" policies imposing constraints on individual job search effort in the context of the German welfare system. For this we merge survey data of long-term unemployed individuals, containing indicators of...

This paper analyses crucial design features of unemployment insurance (UI) policies. We examine three different means of improving the efficiency of UI: the duration of benefit payments, monitoring in conjunction with sanctions, and workfare. To that end we develop a quantitative model of...

According to search-matching theory, the Beveridge curve slopes downward because vacancies are filled more quickly when unemployment is high. Using monthly panel data for local labour markets in Sweden we find no (or only weak) evidence that high unemployment makes it easier to fill vacancies....