Do Unemployment Insurance Recipients Actively Seek Work?  Randomized Trials in Four U.S. States

Ashenfelter, Orley; Ashmore, David; Deschênes, Olivier

doi:10.3386/w6982

“…As with the New Deal it is unclear from these studies whether the "carrot" of job assistance or the "stick" of the tougher monitoring of job search played the most important role. Ashenfelter, Ashmore, and Dechenes (1999) claim to find no increased benefit of stricter enforcement over job search in their examination of random trials, but Anderson (2000) and Abbring, van den Berg, and van Ours (1997) do find evidence that sanctions and strict monitoring have important effects. Distinguishing between the relative importance of carrot and stick is an important area of ongoing research, but what seems to be less in doubt is that the combination of the two can be effective.…”

Section: Discussion Of the Results: A Comparison With The Existing LImentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the Employment Impact of a Mandatory Job Search Program

Blundell¹,

Dias²,

Meghir³

2016

Labor Supply and Taxation

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This paper exploits area-based piloting and age-related eligibility rules to identify treatment effects of a labor market program-the New Deal for Young People in the U.K. A central focus is on substitution/displacement effects and on equilibrium wage effects. The program includes extensive job assistance and wage subsidies to employers. We find that the impact of the program significantly raised transitions to employment by about 5 percentage points. The impact is robust to a wide variety of nonexperimental estimators. However, we present some evidence that this effect may not be as large in the longer run. (JEL: J18, J23, J38)

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“…Early studies from the 1970s tend to identify the effect of UI on post-unemployment earnings by exploiting individual variation in the replacement ratio. Among these, Ehrenberg and Oaxaca (1976) look at the effect of the UI replacement ratio on the change in earnings before and after unemployment using data from the US National Longitudinal Survey, and find that a 25% increase in the replacement ratio yields a 7% increase in post-unemployment 2 More recent evaluations of US randomized experiments tend to find negative effects of tighter search requirements on UI duration (see for example Klepinger et al, 1997), although in some cases the estimated effect is at most quite small (Ashenfelter et al, 1999). See also the recent survey by Fredriksson and Holmlund (2006).…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, a tightening of search requirements may raise the number of claimants who leave unemployment without finding a job, and such transitions into "nonclaimant" nonemployment may have more severe consequences on re-employment outcomes, as they typically imply stronger detachment from the labor market than claimant nonemployment. 6 3 The JSA: characteristics and existing evaluations…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

The long-term effects of job search requirements: Evidence from the UK JSA reform

Petrongolo

¹

2009

Journal of Public Economics

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S ABSTRACTThe Long-Term Effects of Job Search Requirements: Evidence from the UK JSA Reform * This paper investigates long-term returns from unemployment compensation, exploiting variation from the UK JSA reform of 1996, which implied a major increase in job search requirements for eligibility and in the related administrative hurdle. Search theory predicts that such changes should raise the proportion of non-claimant nonemployed, with consequences on search effort and labor market attachment, and lower the reservation wage of the unemployed, with negative effects on post-unemployment wages. I test these ideas on longitudinal data from Social Security records (LLMDB). Using a difference in differences approach, I find that individuals who start an unemployment spell soon after JSA introduction, as opposed to six months earlier, are 2.5-3% more likely to move from unemployment into Incapacity Benefits spells, and 4-5% less likely to have positive earnings in the following year. This latter employment effect only vanishes four years after the initial unemployment shock. Also, annual earnings for the treated individuals are lower than for the non-treated. These results suggest that while tighter search requirements were successful in moving individuals off unemployment benefits, they were not successful in moving them onto longlasting or better jobs, with fairly long lasting unintended consequences on a number of labor market outcomes.JEL Classification: J31, J64, J65

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“…The e¤ect of increased job search assistance has been studied in a few social experiments (see Meyer (1995) for a thorough review and also Ashenfelter, Ashmore and Deschêns (1999)). The evidence from these experiments seems to be that increased service and work search requirements have a positive e¤ect (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The bottom line from these two studies is that "... the results of both sets of experiments imply that providing workers with subsidized job search assistance may be a relatively inexpensive way to provide cost e¤ective, but small, bene…ts for both workers and society." Ashenfelter et al (1999).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Increased Employer Contacts Within a Labour Market Training Program

Johansson

¹

,

Martinson

²

2001

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu W O R K I N G P A P E R 2 0 0 0 : 10 Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may The effect of increased employer contacts within a labour market training programPer Johansson Sara Martinson AbstractUsing both register and survey data, two types of labour market training programs are compared. One program is part of the regular Swedish labour market training and the other, Swit, was initiated as an experiment during a two-year period, in an attempt to solve a bottleneck problem with people working with information technology. Enrolling in Swit increases the chances of …nding employment by 20 percent, as compared to entering the conventional program, directed towards IT. The di¤erence is due to the positive e¤ect of more practical experience within Swit, which is especially large for individuals with a weak position on the labour market.

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Do Unemployment Insurance Recipients Actively Seek Work? Randomized Trials in Four U.S. States

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Evaluating the Employment Impact of a Mandatory Job Search Program

Evaluating the Employment Impact of a Mandatory Job Search Program

The long-term effects of job search requirements: Evidence from the UK JSA reform

The Effect of Increased Employer Contacts Within a Labour Market Training Program

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