Until passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), regulating the employment of non-citizens was held to be only a “peripheral concern” of the immigration statute. Beginning in 1987, United States employers were subject to sanctions for the hiring of undocumented...

Though online technology has generated excitement about its potential to increase access to education, most research has focused on comparing student performance across online and in-person formats. We provide the first evidence that online education affects the number of people pursuing formal...

Prior literature has established that displaced workers suffer persistent earnings losses by following workers in administrative data after mass layoffs. This literature assumes that these are involuntary separations owing to economic distress. This paper examines this assumption by matching...

The trend towards activation has been one of the major issues in recent welfare and labour market reforms in Europe and the US. Despite considerable initial variation across national models with respect to the scope and intensity of activation, redefining the link between social protection and...

Unemployment benefits, benefit duration, base period and qualifying period are constituent parameters of the unemployment insurance system in most OECD countries. From economic research we know that the amount and duration of unemployment benefits increase unemployment. To analyze the effects of...

The trend towards activation has been one of the major issues in recent welfare and labour market reforms in Europe and the US. Despite considerable initial variation across national models with respect to the scope and intensity of activation, redefining the link between social protection and...

This paper examines labor market conditions and public employment policies in the United States during what some are calling the Great Recession. We document the dramatic labor market changes that rapidly unfolded when the rate of gross domestic product growth turned negative, from the end of...

Over the past several decades, the rate at which regular unemployment insurance recipients run out of benefits before they have found jobs, even in a strong labor market, has been gradually rising. For example, in 1973, 27.4 percent of UI recipients exhausted their benefits; in 2007 (with a...

This paper considers employment growth and unemployment from 1990-2010 in a cross-section of cities in light of practical tools that city governments have at their disposal to provide relief. In particular, I test educational attainment (both initial levels and growth over time) and public...