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 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....

Swiss policy makers created a unique link between unemployment benefits and Active Labor Market Programs (ALMPs) by making benefit payments conditional on program attendance after 7 months of unemployment duration. We evaluate the effect of Active Labor Market Programs and benefit entitlement on...

We model how unemployment benefit sanctions - benefit reductions that are imposed if unemployed do not comply with job search guidelines - affect unemployment. In our analysis we find that not only micro effects concerning the behavior of individual unemployed workers are relevant, but also...