Social welfare systems usually imply specific obligations for benefit recipients. If a recipient does not comply with these obligations, a sanction involving a punitive benefits reduction may be imposed. In this paper we give an overview of the literature on the effects of sanctions in social...

Social welfare systems usually imply specific obligations for benefit recipients. If a recipient does not comply with these obligations, a sanction involving a punitive benefits reduction may be imposed. In this paper we give an overview of the literature on the effects of sanctions in social...

With the introduction of a new welfare benefit system in 2005, Germany implemented quite strict benefit sanctions for welfare recipients aged younger than 25 years. For all types of non-compliance except for missing appointments, their basic cash benefit is withdrawn for three months. A second...

We study the impact of a mandatory activation program for young welfare recipients in the Netherlands. Introduced at the end of 2009, the goal of the program was to prevent so-called NEETs (individuals not in employment, education or training). We use a large administrative data set for the...

Although activation services such as monitoring, training, or job subsidies have been shown to increase exits from unemployment, there is little comprehensive evidence about the effects of activation during recessions. Here we evaluate a large activation programme introduced in Portugal in 2012,...

We extend the benchmark model of Aghion and Blanchard (1994), assuming two segments of the emerging private sector that differ in workers' productivity. We look at the paths of employment, wages, taxes, labor costs and profits during and after the transition, up until the shock is fully...