Unemployment in the European Union (EU) is a serious problem that threatens to disrupt the integration of accession countries, the character of individual countries, and the continued existence of the EU. European integration poses a huge conundrum for European employment because the...

We analyse gender wage inequalities in Italy in the mid-1990s and in the mid-2000s. In this period important labour market developments occurred: institutional changes have loosened the use of flexible and atypical contracts; the female employment rates and educational levels have substantially...

The paper analyzes the effects of individual and household characteristics on current poverty status, while controlling for initial conditions, past poverty status and unobserved heterogeneity in 14 European Countries for the period 1994-2000, using the European Community Household Panel. The...

We perform a comprehensive analysis of the stepping-stone effect of temporary agency employment on unemployed workers. Using the timing-of-events approach, we not only investigate whether agency employment is a bridge into regular em-ployment but also analyze its effect on post-unemployment...

This paper investigates how precisely short-term, job-search oriented training programs as opposed to long-term, human capital intensive training programs work. We evaluate and compare their effects on time until job entry, stability of employment, and earnings. Further, we examine the...

Failure of participants to complete training programs is pervasive in existing active labor market programs both in developed and developing countries. The proportion of dropouts in prototypical programs ranges from 10 to 50 percent of all participants. From a policy perspective, it is of...

The guide outlines the main evaluation challenges associated with ALMP s, and shows how to obtain rigorous impact estimates using two leading evaluation approaches. The most credible and straightforward evaluation method is a randomized design, in which a group of potential participants is...

This paper investigates the relationship between political instability and labor market institutions. We develop a theoretical model in which some features of the political process, by reducing the future yields of policy interventions, induce an incumbent government to choose labor market...

A substantial number of young unemployed participate in active labor market programs (ALMP) in Germany each year. While the aims of these programs are clear - a fast re-integration into employment or enrollment in further education - a comprehensive analysis of their effectiveness has yet to be...