Employment rates among senior workers (aged 55 or over) in southern Europe are among the lowest in OECD economies. Spain is a paradigmatic example, with high unemployment rates and very low workforce reentry rates for unemployed workers. Poor demand is typically blamed for this problem, but the...

Unemployment increased drastically over the course of the Great Recession from 4.5 percent prior to the recession to 10 percent at its peak in October 2009. Since then, the unemployment rate has come down steadily, and it stood at 5.8 percent in November 2014. Based on existing analyses and some...

This paper studies how changes in extended unemployment insurance (UI) benefit affect the duration of unemployment. We investigate this question by exploiting not only strict age thresholds but also the pre-displacement tenure and the reason for separation from the previous job in the Japanese...

Women without work after childbirth are at risk of losing their connection to the labor market. However, they may participate in adult education programs. We analyze the effect of this on the duration to work and on the wage rate, by applying conditional difference-in-differences approaches. We...

Two in ten working age adults have been out of work for over a year in Visegrad economies and long term joblessness is especially high among the uneducated. The employment disadvantage of uneducated workers tends to be larger than in Western European countries, and is especially grievous in...

This paper examines whether or not a prolonged unemployment period can raise the quality of job matching after unemployment. We focus on job tenure as an indicator of a good quality job match after unemployment. We match two sets of Japanese administrative data compiled by the public employment...

In this paper, we use a recent policy change in the Netherlands to study how changes in search requirements for the older unemployed affect their transition rates to employment, early retirement and sickness/disability benefits. The reform, becoming effective on January 1st 2004, required the...

In this paper, we use a recent policy change in the Netherlands to study how changes in search requirements for the older unemployed affect their transition rates to employment, early retirement and sickness/disability benefits. The reform, becoming effective on January 1st 2004, required the...

This paper examines whether or not a prolonged unemployment period can raise the quality of job matching after unemployment. We focus on job tenure as an indicator of a good quality job match after unemployment. We match two sets of Japanese administrative data compiled by the public employment...

This paper provides a comprehensive evaluation of benefit sanctions, i.e. temporary reductions in unemployment benefits as punishment for noncompliance with eligibility requirements. In addition to the effects on unemployment durations, we evaluate the effects on post-unemployment employment...