We present a theoretical and empirical analysis of different types of active labor market policies (ALMP).In our empirical analysis we use data on 20 OECD countries covering the time period 1985-1999.We find that labor market training is the most effective program to bring down...

This paper explores the optimal interaction between the tax system and unemployment compensation in insuring people against the risks of involuntary unemployment and low ability.To that end, we introduce search unemployment in a model of optimal non-linear income taxation.We find that the...

This paper studies how changes in the two key parameters of unemployment insurance - the benefit replacement rate (RR) and the potential duration of benefits (PBD) - affect the duration of unemployment.In 1989, the Austrian government made unemployment insurance more generous by changing,...

Unemployment insurance agencies may combat moral hazard by punishing refusals to apply to assigned vacancies. However, the possibility to report sick creates an additional moral hazard, since during sickness spells, minimum requirements on search behavior do not apply. This reduces the ex-ante...

This paper contributes to the policy-relevant question whether self-employment is a way out of (long-term) unemployment. We estimate the relationship between the entry rate into self-employment and previous (long-term) unemployment on the basis of pseudo-panel data for Germany in the period...

We present quasi-experimental evidence on the employment effects of an unprecedented large increase in the early retirement age (ERA). Raising the ERA has the potential to extend contribution periods and to reduce the number of pension beneficiaries at the same time, if employment exits are...

The paper studies simple strategies of labor tax reform in a search and matching model of the labor market featuring endogenous labor supply.Changing the composition of the tax wedge|that is, reducing a payroll tax and increasing a progressive wage tax such that the marginal tax wedge remains...

Recent evaluations of active labor market policies are not very optimistic about their effectiveness to bring unemployed back to work.An important reason is that unemployed get locked-in, that is they reduce their effort to find a regular job.This paper uses an administrative dataset from the...

The development of the unemployment rate di¤ers substantially between OECD countries.In this paper we investigate to what extent these differences are related to labor market institutions.In our analysis we use data of eighteen OECD countries over the period 1960-1994 and show that the way in...

The development of the unemployment rate differs substantially between OECD countries. In recent years some countries experienced a mild increase, other countries had a stable unemployment rate, while there are also 'successful' countries in which the unemployment rate decreased a lot. A common...