Previous empirical research has shown that Mexico's Oportunidades program has succeeded in increasing schooling and improving health of disadvantaged children. This paper studies the program's potential longer-term consequences for the poverty and inequality of these children. It adapts methods...

Labor market policies succeed or fail at least in part depending on how well they reflect or account for behavioral responses. Insights from behavioral economics, which allow for realistic deviations from standard economic assumptions about behavior, have consequences for the design and...

This note examines the balance of activation strategies in OECD countries, where this type of policy approach has a long tradition. Countries share the objective of strengthening employment and reducing benefit dependency and vulnerability among the working-age population, but the balance of...

Skills are a central source of high productivity and economic well-being. But what do we mean by productive skills? Both with regard to measurement and policy, the primary focus in the U.S. has been on academic skills, as measured by tests of reading, writing and math abilities and by...

The purpose of the paper is to analyse how labour market and labour market institutions reacted during recent crises. In early 1990s Estonia introduced a set of rather unique policy options like currency board as a ground for monetary policy, low taxes, open foreign trade policy, low public...

The Danish model won fame for its performance during the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000-years and took a position as a model for the European Employment Strategy and a much cited example of a real life flexicurity model. Like most other European countries Denmark has now fallen into a deep...

Starting in the mid 1970s, Chile implemented comprehensive structural market reforms. Using manufacturing plant-level data on Chilean firms for years 1980 to 2001, we estimate the role of reforms on efficiency. We analyze aggregate productivity constructed from micro data to find that in the...

Industrial decline and restructuring in the transition economies presents a prime example of the relationship between changes in aggregate economic indicators and underlying microeconomic adjustments. This paper employs matched labor force survey data to focus on the magnitude and determinants...

We analyze the impact of remittances on the labor supply of men and women in post-conflict Tajikistan. Individuals from remittance-receiving households are less likely to participate in the labor market and supply fewer hours when they do. The results are robust to different measures of...

We develop a theoretical framework that considers the role played by moral hazard and the diversity of networks and cultures in the choice of hiring channel. In favoritism contexts social networks, and particularly strong ties, are adopted as hiring channels for unskilled jobs and result in wage...