In a field experiment in two Danish counties about half of the unemployed workers were randomly assigned to a mandatory activation program. Analyzing data from this experiment we show that activation can be very effective in reducing unemployment durations.

This paper investigates how a mandatory activation program in Denmark affects the job finding rate of unemployed workers. The activation program was introduced in an experimental setting where about half of the workers who became unemployed in the period from November 2005 to March 2006 were...

This paper investigates how the potential duration of unemployment benefits affects the quality of post-unemployment jobs. It takes advantage of a natural experiment introduced by a change in Slovenia's unemployment insurance law that substantially reduced the potential benefit duration....