Activation policies aimed at getting working-age people off benefits and into work have become a buzzword in labour market policies. Yet they are defined and implemented differently across OECD countries, and their success rates vary too. The Great Recession has posed a severe stress test for...

Activation policies aimed at getting working-age people off benefits and into work have become a buzzword in labour market policies. Yet they are defined and implemented differently across OECD countries and their success rates vary too. The Great Recession has posed a severe stress test for...

Activation policies aimed at getting working-age people off benefits and into work have been embraced by many OECD countries. In a previous paper, I have argued that activation strategies have performed well during the Great Recession and subsequent recovery in some, but not all, of these...

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...

Activation policies aimed at getting working-age people off benefits and into work have become a buzzword in labour market policies. Yet they are defined and implemented differently across OECD countries, and their success rates vary too. The Great Recession has posed a severe stress test for...

This paper first reviews trends since 1985 in public spending on labour market programmes, both active and passive. It then reviews the main findings from recent evaluations of labour market programmes. At first sight evaluation findings are not very encouraging, but there are some success...