The low unemployment rates traditionally enjoyed by Sweden have often been attributed to the country’s extensive system of active labour market programmes, which have thus often been regarded as a model for other countries to emulate. The paper investigates the presence of short- and long-term...

This paper assesses the impact of Swedish welfare-to-work programmes on labour market performance including wages, labour market status, unemployment duration and future welfare-to-work participation. We develop a structural dynamic model of labour supply which incorporates detailed...

The paper evaluates the differential performance of the six main types of Swedish programmes that were available to adult unemployed workers entitled to unemployment benefits in the 1990s: labour market training, workplace introduction, work experience placement, relief work, trainee replacement...

A significant gap exists in the UK between the employment rate for Ethnic Minorities and that for Whites. From a policy perspective, it is important to know whether this gap is due to differences in the characteristics of White and Ethnic Minority groups (which reduce the employability of Ethnic...

Regression, matching, control function and instrumental variables methods for recovering the impact of education on individual earnings are reviewed for single treatment and sequential multiple treatments with and without heterogeneous returns. The sensitivity of the estimates once applied to a...

We investigate the presence of short- and long-term effects from joining a Swedish labor market program vis-à-vis more intense job search in open unemployment. Overall, the impact of the program system is found to have been mixed. Joining a program has increased employment rates among...

This paper provides a non-technical review of the evidence on the returns to education and training for the individual, the firm and the economy at large. It begins by reviewing the empirical work that has attempted to estimate the true causal effect of education and training on individual...

We evaluate the effects of undergoing any early education (before the compulsory starting age of 5) and of pre-school on a cohort of British children born in 1958. In contrast to most available studies, we are able to assess whether any effects on cognition and socialisation are long-lasting, as...