Randomized experiments provide policy relevant treatment effects if there are no spillovers between participants and nonparticipants. We show that this assumption is violated for a Danish activation program for unemployed workers. Using a difference-in-difference model we show that the...

This Paper provides a simple matching model in which unemployed workers and employers can be matched together through social networks and through more efficient, but also more costly, methods. In this framework, decentralized decisions to utilize social networks in the job search process can be...

We present a structural framework for the evaluation of public policies intended to increase job search intensity. Most of the literature defines search intensity as a scalar that influences the arrival rate of job offers; here we treat it as the number of job applications that workers send out....

This paper provides an overview of the main features of unemployment in Australia, and its consequences. Its main objectives are to: describe the main features of the evolution and distribution of unemployment; present information on labour market outcomes underlying the changes in unemployment...

We develop a structural non-stationary model of job search in the fashion of van den Berg (1990). Non-stationarity comes from the duration-dependence in benefits, in the arrival rate of job offers, and in wage offers. The model is then estimated using the French sample of the ECHP Survey...

This paper uses data on very small UK geographies to investigate the effective size of local labor markets. Our approach treats geographic space as continuous, as opposed to a collection of non-overlapping administrative units, thus avoiding problems of mismeasurement of local labor markets...

This paper analyzes the reservation wages of first and second generation migrants. Based on recently collected and rich survey data of a representative inflow sample into unemployment in Germany, we empirically test the hypothesis that reservation wages increase from first to second generation...

Implementation of microeconomic reform is likely to disturb the existing allocation of labour between production activities, and hence to initiate a process of adjustment in the labour market. An important aspect of this adjustment process which occurs due to microeconomic reform will involve...

The administration of benefits is a relatively neglected aspect of the analysis of disincentive effects of unemployment benefit systems. We investigate this issue with a field experiment in Hungary involving random assignment of benefit claimants to treatment and control groups, a method of...

This Paper presents the results of an experimental study on unemployment benefit sanctions. The experimental set-up allows us to distinguish between the effects of benefit sanctions once they are imposed (the ex post effect) and the effects that discourage the unemployed from risking benefit...