Swedish active labour market programmes in the 1990s: overall  effectiveness and differential performance

Sianesi, Barbara

doi:10.1920/wp.ifs.2002.0203

Cited by 39 publications

(46 citation statements)

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“…36 A similarly conspicuous heterogeneity by entitlement status was found for the 'overall' effects on employment probability by Sianesi (2001b). As to entitled individuals joining a program around benefit exhaustion the distinct temporal pattern of the effect on program participation can be precisely mapped into the one of the effect on the probability of being collecting unemployment benefits (Figure 5.7B and C).…”

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An evaluation of the Swedish system of active labour market programmes in the 1990s

Sianesi¹

2002

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Abstract:We investigate the presence of short-and long-term effects from joining a Swedish labour market program vis-à-vis more intense job search in open unemployment. Overall, the impact of the program system is found to have been mixed. Joining a program has increased employment rates among participants, a result robust to a misclassification problem in the data. On the other hand it has also allowed participants to remain significantly longer on unemployment benefits and more generally in the unemployment system, this being particularly the case for those entitled individuals entering a program around the time of their unemployment benefits exhaustion.Keywords: Active labour market programs, evaluation, matching, propensity score, treatment effects, unemployment compensation, bounds, missing data. JEL classification: C14, J38, J65, J68.Acknowledgements: Above all I wish to acknowledge the numerous stimulating discussions, comments, suggestions and the continuous guidance and support offered me by my supervisor Costas Meghir. Many thanks to two anonymous referees for their constructive and detailed comments, and to Richard Blundell, Kenneth Carling, Monica Costa Dias, Bernd Fitzenberger, Anders Forslund, Kei Hirano, Hide Ichimura, Astrid Kunze, Laura Larsson, Elena Martinez, Katarina Richardson and Jeff Smith for beneficial discussions and helpful comments, and to seminar participants at IFAU, IFS, Copenhagen University and IZA for useful comments. Erich Battistin and Edwin Leuven should be separately thanked for countless stimulating discussions. Thanks also to Kerstin Johansson for the municipality-level data and to Helge Bennmark and Altin Vejsiu and especially Anders Harkman for helpful institutional information and data issues clarifications. A very special thank to Susanne Ackum Agell for her support and encouragement throughout, as well as for organising financial support through the IFAU. Financial support from the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Fiscal Policy at the IFS is equally gratefully acknowledged.

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An evaluation of the Swedish system of active labour market programmes in the 1990s

Sianesi¹

2002

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“…Regarding the effects on unsubsidized employment (the first policy question stated above), statistical matching is frequently applied. A control group of unsubsidized workers or persons out of work is generated to construct the counterfactual of non-treatment for individuals for whom hirings subsidies are paid (Lorenz, 1988;Hollenbeck and Willke, 1991;Jaenichen, 2002;Knight, 2002;Sianesi, 2003;Forslund et al, 2004;Hamersma, 2005;Cockx and Göbel, 2005). There are a number of problems with this approach: the likely presence of unobservable differences between treatment and control group, selectivity in the decision who is subsidized, and changes in the composition of the groups over time (Katz, 1998).…”

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“…Heckman et al (1999) conclude that the employment impact of different active labor market policies is similar and small. Martin and Grubb (2001) and Sianesi (2003) stress that hiring subsidies paid to private employers have a greater impact on employment than public training programs or job creation schemes. However, these favorable assessments may partly be due to possible overestimation of the employment effect by the matching estimator, as discussed above.…”

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Do Hiring Subsidies Reduce Unemployment Among the Elderly? Evidence from Two Natural Experiments

et al. 2007

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Die Dis cus si on Pape rs die nen einer mög lichst schnel len Ver brei tung von neue ren For schungs arbei ten des ZEW. Die Bei trä ge lie gen in allei ni ger Ver ant wor tung der Auto ren und stel len nicht not wen di ger wei se die Mei nung des ZEW dar.Dis cus si on Papers are inten ded to make results of ZEW research prompt ly avai la ble to other eco no mists in order to encou ra ge dis cus si on and sug gesti ons for revi si ons. The aut hors are sole ly respon si ble for the con tents which do not neces sa ri ly repre sent the opi ni on of the ZEW.Download this ZEW Discussion Paper from our ftp server:ftp://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/dp/dp07001.pdf Nontechnical SummaryOlder workers frequently have difficulties to find new work after unemployment. This study is part of the evaluation of the "Hartz laws" commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of Labor and Economic Affairs. We examine whether eligibility to the program increases the chances to make the transition from unemployment to employment. The effect of eligibility on the transition rate into employment has been studied less frequently than the effect of actual subsidy receipt on integration into unsubsidized employment. However, the former effect is a precondition for the latter: if the availability of subsidies does not change hiring behavior, there is no reason why subsidies should affect individual transitions into unsubsidized employment.To estimate the effect of eligibility, we use two changes in the legal rules. Estimates from duration analysis of the transition rate show that, for the population as a whole, the probability of leaving unemployment and entering employment is unaffected by the availability of hiring subsidies. For women in East Germany, however, extending eligibility led to an increase in exit from unemployment by six percentage points, while the ending of the specific subsidy program for older workers lowered their employment chances by about twopercentage points. Further analysis shows that the ineffectiveness for most population groups is due to deadweight effects: an increase in subsidized hirings is accompanied by a decline in unsubsidized new employment. Do Hiring Subsidies Abstract:We estimate the effects of hiring subsidies for older workers on transitions from unemployment to employment in Germany. Using a natural experiment, our first set of estimates is based on a legal change extending the group of eligible unemployed persons. A subsequent legal change in the opposite direction is used to validate these results. Our data cover the population of unemployed jobseekers in Germany and was specifically made available for our purposes from administrative data. Consistent support for an employment effect of hiring subsidies can only be found for women in East Germany. Concerning other population groups, firms´ hiring behavior is hardly influenced by the program and hiring subsidies mainly lead to deadweight effects. JEL-Codes: J 64, H 24, C 31

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“… In Sweden, where public jobs have been widely used in the past, there is absolutely no evidence of post-programme impact (Sianesi, 2002).…”

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NEET Youth in the Aftermath of the Crisis

Carcillo¹,

Fernández²,

Königs³

et al. 2015

OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers

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Swedish active labour market programmes in the 1990s: overall effectiveness and differential performance

Cited by 39 publications

References 25 publications

An evaluation of the Swedish system of active labour market programmes in the 1990s

An evaluation of the Swedish system of active labour market programmes in the 1990s

Do Hiring Subsidies Reduce Unemployment Among the Elderly? Evidence from Two Natural Experiments

NEET Youth in the Aftermath of the Crisis

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