How effective are effort targets? This paper provides novel evidence on the effects of job search requirements on effort provision and labor market outcomes. Based on large-scale register data, we estimate the returns to required job search effort, instrumenting individual requirements with...

Standard program evaluations implicitly assume that individuals are perfectly informed about the considered policy change and the related institutional rules. This seems not very plausible in many contexts, as diverse examples show. However, evidence on how incomplete information affects the...

Job search requirements constrain the effort choice of unemployment insurance recipients by enforcing a minimum number of monthly applications. This paper is the first to assess how individual search effort, job finding and job stability react to this constraint. Standard job search theory...

Enforcing the compliance with job search obligations is a core task of conditional benefit systems like unemployment insurance (UI) or welfare. For targeted policy design, it is key to understand how the enforcement regime affects job search outcomes. This paper provides first estimates that...

Caseworkers are the main human resources used to provide social services. This paper asks if, and how much, caseworkers matter for the outcomes of unemployed individuals. Using large-scale administrative data, I exploit exogenous variation in unplanned absences among Swiss UI caseworkers. I find...

Caseworkers are the main human resources used to provide social services. This paper asks if, and how much, caseworkers matter for the outcomes of unemployed individuals. Using large-scale administrative data, I exploit exogenous variation in unplanned absences among Swiss UI caseworkers. I find...