This paper investigates how a mandatory activation program in Denmark affects the job finding rate of unemployed workers. The activation program was introduced in an experimental setting where about half of the workers who became unemployed in the period from November 2005 to March 2006 were...

The number of long-term unemployed in Germany has stagnated at around one million for several years. Despite excellent labour market conditions, the long-term unemployment rate is well above the OECD average. Therefore, the "carrot and stick" principle of Hartz reforms is in clear need of...

This study evaluates the effectiveness of contracting out mandatory publicly provided counselling and training for long-term unemployed in Flanders (Belgium) to private for-profit and non-profit organisations (FPOs and NPOs). A multivariate transition model exploits timing-of-events and novel...

This paper exploits a substantial reform of the Dutch UI law to study the effect of the entitlement period on job finding and subsequent labor market outcomes. Using detailed administrative data covering the full population we find that reducing the entitlement period increases the job finding...

Job search assistance and intensified counseling have been found to be effective for labor market integration by a large number of studies, but the evidence for older and hard-to-place unemployed individuals more specifically is mixed. In this paper we present key results from the evaluation of...

This paper evaluates counselling programmes in an equilibrium matching model where workers are heterogeneous in skill levels. Job search effort, labour demand and wages are endogenous. When wages are bargained over, raising the effectiveness of or the access to counselling programmes pushes...

We investigate the effectiveness of three different job-search and training programmes for German long-term unemployed persons. On the basis of an extensive administrative data set, we evaluated the effects of those programmes on various levels of aggregation using Causal Machine Learning. We...

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...

We study how job search assistance (JSA) affects employment in a randomized pilot study with long run administrative data. JSA increases employment in the first year after assignment. In the second year, when most job seekers have left JSA, the employment gains evaporate, and even turn into...

This paper examines the impact of an experiment in North Macedonia in which vulnerable unemployed individuals applying to a subsidized employment program were randomly selected to attend job interviews. Employers hiring a new employee from the target population receive a subsidy covering the...