Active labor market programs continue to receive high priority in wealthy countries despite the fact that the benefits appear small relative to the costs. This apparent discrepancy suggests that the programs may have a broader purpose than simply increasing employment - for instance, preventing...

In this paper, we estimate the effect of workfare policy on crime by exploiting two exogenous welfare policy changes in Denmark. Our results show a strong decline in the crime rate among treated unemployment uninsured men relative to untreated uninsured and unemployment insured men, and part of...

In this paper, we focus on a novel and potentially important aspect of the workfare policy in the Danish labor market, namely its effect on crime. We do this by exploiting two policy changes. First, we examine the effect of a series of national welfare reforms introduced during the 1990s. Those...

This paper studies labour market policy in a society where differently gifted individuals can invest in training to further increase their labour market productivity. Furthermore, the government seeks both efficiency and equity. Frictions in the matching process create unemployment and...