In this paper we evaluate the effects of a regional experiment that reduced payroll-taxes by 3–6 percentage points for three years in Northern Finland. We match each firm in the target region with a similar firm in the control region and estimate the effect of the payroll-tax reduction by...

Employment and wage subsidies are used to combat long-term unemployment, yet there is little research to guide the design of such programs. Discontinuities in the design and implementation of wage subsidies under the Swedish New Start Jobs-policy allow us to study effects of both subsidy rate...

Using a Difference-in-Differences approach we evaluate the effects of a 10 percentage points reduction in the payroll tax introduced in 2002 for firms in the northern part of Sweden. We find no employment effects for existing firms and can rule out that a 1 percentage point payroll tax reduction...

The paper evaluates the differential performance of the six main types of Swedish programmes that were available to adult unemployed workers entitled to unemployment benefits in the 1990s: labour market training, workplace introduction, work experience placement, relief work, trainee replacement...

We have estimated effects of job practice for participants entering the programme between 1999 and 2006. On average the programme had a moderately sized positive effect for the participants – the expected time to work for the unemployed participants was reduced by around six per cent over a...

This paper discusses the case for expanding active labor market policy in recession. We find that there is reasonable case for relying more heavily on certain kinds of programs. The argument is tied to the varying size of the lock-in effect in boom and recession. If programs with relatively...

In 2007, the Swedish employer-paid payroll tax was cut on a large scale for young workers, substantially reducing labor costs for this group. We estimate a small impact, both on employment and on wages, implying a labor demand elasticity for young workers at around -0.31. Since the tax reduction...

The treatment effect of a Swedish employment subsidy is estimated using exact covariate-matching and instrumental variables methods. Our estimates suggest that the programme had a positive treatment effect for the participants. <p> We also show how non-parametric methods can be used to estimate the...</p>

Although rather discouraging in general, the evaluation literature indicates some measures that have been successful. Job-search assistance, wage subsidies in the private sector, and labour market training do work for some groups, even if the impacts are not large. Also, the evaluation...

We estimate the effects of conditioning benefits on program participation among older long-term unemployed workers. We exploit a Swedish reform which reduced UI duration from 90 to 60 weeks for a group of older unemployed workers in a setting where workers who exhausted their benefits received...