What Works and for Whom: A Review of OECD Countries' Experiences with Active Labour Market Policies

Although rather discouraging in general, the evaluation literature indicates some measures that have been successful. Job-search assistance, wage subsidies in the private sector, and labour market training do work for some groups, even if the impacts are not large. Also, the evaluation literature focuses on the impacts of one-off programs. Regular interventions, such as job-search monitoring, intensive interviews, and referrals to vacant jobs, have rarely been evaluated rigorously. Recently, introduced "activation" strategies in some OECD countries do appear to yield significant employment gains for participants. An important element in such strategies is experiments with alternative ways of improving the performance of the public employment service. Activation policies which combine high-quality assistance to find work with pressure on unemployed people to accept job offers can be effective with respect to unemployment duration, but more rapid returns to work sometimes comes at the cost of accepting lower re-employment earnings. Although active policies might give rise to displacement effects in the short run, this need not be case the over the medium run of a few years. Declines in structural employment rates achieved by many OECD countries in the 1990s give some reasons for optimism in this respect.

[1]  Gerard J. van den Berg,et al.  The Effect of Unemployment Insurance Sanctions on the Transition Rate from Unemployment to Employment , 1998 .

[2]  B. Klaauw,et al.  Counseling and Monitoring of Unemployed Workers: Theory and Evidence from a Controlled Social Experiment , 2001 .

[3]  C. Gorter,et al.  Estimating the Effect of Counseling and Monitoring the Unemployed Using a Job Search Model , 1996 .

[4]  B. Sianesi.  An evaluation of the active labour market programmes in Sweden , 2001 .

[5]  Jan C. van Ours,et al.  The Effect of Unemployment Insurance Sanctions on the Transition Rate from Unemployment to Employment , 1996 .

[6]  Developing Skills: What We Know About the Impact of American Employment and Training Programs on Employment, Earnings and Educational Outcomes , 1998 .

[7]  Alan Barrett,et al.  "Employability" and its Relevance for the Management of the Live Register , 2001 .

[8]  Robert G. Fay.  Making the Public Employment Service More Effective through the Introduction of Market Signals , 1997 .

[9]  Linda Richardson.  Impact of the Mutual Obligation Initiative on the Exit Behaviour of Unemployment Benefit Recipients: The Threat of Additional Activities , 2002 .

[10]  David B Grubb.  ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA FOR UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS , 2000 .

[11]  Stephen McKay,et al.  Unemployment and job seeking after the introduction of Jobseeker's Allowance , 1999 .

[12]  Robert G. Fay.  Enhancing the Effectiveness of Active Labour Market Policies: Evidence from Programme Evaluations in OECD Countries , 1996 .

[13]  John P. Martin.  What Works Among Active Labour Market Policies , 1998 .

[14]  Counseling and Monitoring of Unemployed Workers: Theory and Evidence from a Controlled Social Experiment , 2001 .

[15]  P. Dolton,et al.  The Long‐Run Effects of Unemployment Monitoring and Work‐Search Programs: Experimental Evidence from the United Kingdom , 2002, Journal of Labor Economics.

[16]  J. V. Reenen.  No More Skivvy Schemes? Active Labour Market Policies and the British New Deal for the Young Unemployed in Context , 2001 .

[17]  J. Heckman,et al.  The Economics and Econometrics of Active Labor Market Programs , 1999 .

[18]  Anders Björklund,et al.  Experimental Evaluation of European Labour Market Policy , 1996 .

[19]  Janet Currie.  Early Childhood Intervention Programs: What Do We Know? , 2000 .

[20]  M. Berger,et al.  Is the Threat of Training More Effective Than Training Itself? Experimental Evidence from the UI System , 1999 .

[21]  A. Krueger,et al.  An Evaluation of the Swedish Active Labor Market Policy: New and Received Wisdom , 1994 .

[22]  B. Showler.  The public employment service , 1976 .

[23]  Bruce D. Meyer.  Lessons from the U.S. Unemployment Insurance Experiments , 1995 .

[24]  John P. Martin,et al.  What Works Among Active Labour Market Policies: Evidence from OECD Countries' Experiences | Conference – 1998 , 1998 .

[25]  An Assessment of the Impact of Government-Sponsored Training , 1996 .

[26]  Laura Larsson.  Evaluation of Swedish Youth Labor Market Programs , 2003, The Journal of Human Resources.

[27]  K. Carling,et al.  The relative efficiency of labour market pro-grammes: Swedish experience from the 1990s , 2004 .

[28]  Peter Dolton,et al.  Unemployment Duration and the Restart Effect: Some Experimental Evidence , 1996 .

[29]  J. Zweimüller,et al.  The Impact of Active Labor Market Programs and Benefit Entitlement on the Duration of Unemployment , 2000 .

[30]  P. Dolton,et al.  The Long-Run Effects of Unemployment Monitoring and Work-Search Programs: Some Experimental Evidence from the U.K , 1997 .

[31]  Do wage subsidies enhance employability? Evidence from Australian youth , 1998 .

[32]  Kevin Denny,et al.  Investing in People: The Labour Market Impact of Human Resource Interventions Funded Under the 1994-1999 Community Support Framework in Ireland , 2001 .

[33]  David H. Greenberg,et al.  Evaluating Government Training Programs for the Economically Disadvantaged , 1997 .

[34]  L. C. Odencrantz,et al.  Public employment service in the United States , 1940 .

[35]  Ronnie Andersson,et al.  Transition from education to the labour market , 2001 .

[36]  John P. Martin.  MEASURES OF REPLACEMENT RATES FOR THE PURPOSE OF INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS: A NOTE , 1996 .

[37]  L. Calmfors,et al.  ACTIVE LABOUR MARKET POLICY AND UNEMPLOYMENT - A FRAMEWORK FOR THE ANALYSIS OF CRUCIAL DESIGN FEATURES , 1994 .