This paper assesses nonexperimental estimators using results from a six-state random assignment study of mandatory welfare-to-work programs. The assessment addresses two questions: which nonexperimental methods provide the most accurate estimates; and do the best methods work well enough to...

This paper is an examination of how autoregressive earnings models commonly used to evaluate job-training programs can produce badly biased estimates of both the magnitude and the temporal pattern of program impacts. Ashenfelter's results are used to illustrate this point, and a new, more...

Bloom presents findings from the Texas Worker Adjustment Demonstration, a 2,192-person randomized experimental evaluation of reemployment programs for displaced workers conducted at three sites in Texas. This project demonstrated that a relatively inexpensive mix of job-search assistance and...

This paper addresses the question: How does implementation influence the effectiveness of mandatory welfare-to-work programs? Data from three large-scale, multi-site random assignment experiments were pooled; quantitative measures of program implementation were constructed; and multilevel...

This article presents findings from a randomized experiment conducted in four Canadian provinces to measure the effects of a generous financial incentive that was designed to promote rapid re-employment among workers who were displaced from their jobs by changing economic conditions. The...

We explore the use of instrumental variables (IV) analysis with a multisite randomized trial to estimate the effect of a mediating variable on an outcome in cases where it can be assumed that the observed mediator is the only mechanism linking treatment assignment to outcomes, an assumption...

Evaluations of public programs in many fields reveal that different types of programs—or different versions of the same program—vary in their effectiveness. Moreover, a program that is effective for one group of people might not be effective for other groups, and a program that is effective...

This paper attempts to determine whether wage records reported quarterly by employers to state Unemployment Insurance (UI) agencies provide a valid alternative to more costly retrospective sample surveys of individuals as the basis for measuring the labor market impacts of employment and...