Employment Effects of Early Interventions on Job Search Programs

We investigate the dependence of the program effect on varying entry times for a low cost job-search assistance program in Austria. The Austrian targeting policy is to admit every unemployed to a job-search program before the fourth month. The program effect is measured by a shift in the transition rate into employment upon program entry, using the timing-of-events method. Our findings are that the program effect is positive and does not vary significantly for program entries during the first year of unemployment, but it drops drastically thereafter.