While high rates of youth unemployment are a severe problem in most European countries, the program evaluation literature shows that disadvantaged youths constitute a group that is particularly difficult to assist effectively. As innovative measures are thus needed, we evaluate a German pilot...

The universal Scandinavian welfare model offers generous tax financed social benefits. The scheme is associated with workfare elements as a targeting device to direct benefits to those considered deserving. Thereby social insurance and egalitarian outcomes are achieved while work incentives and...

We study the impact of India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) on children's educational outcomes via women's labour force participation. Using data from the Young Lives Study and taking advantage of the spatial and temporal variation in the intensity of implementation of the...

The identification of average causal effects of a treatment in observational studies is typically based either on the unconfoundedness assumption or on the availability of an instrument. When available, instruments may also be used to test for the unconfoundedness assumption (exogeneity of the...

The paper performs a reinvestigation of Nordic wage formation along the lines of Calmfors and Nymoen (1990) with data that include the recent period of high unemployment and low in ation. Among the main findings are: 1)There has been no shift in Nordic wage formation since 1987. 2)The wage...

The following thesis concerns itself with the labour supply of elderly married men eligible for early retirement under the AFP (AvtaleFestet Pensjonsordning) scheme. Retirement behaviour is a theme of increasing importance as demographic changes lead to higher proportions of elderly individuals...

By comparing mean outcomes for a large number of matched samples of participants and nonparticipants we estimate individual earnings effect of the Norwegian labour market training programme (LMT) targeted at unemployed adults in the years 1991-1996. The average training effect on the trained is...

We investigate treatment effects of active labour market programmes for Norwegian adults for the 1990 to 2000 period. Three types of active labour market programmes are evaluated within a competing risks hazard rate model. Non-parametric specifications on both duration dependence and unobserved...

Based on a sequence of reforms in the Norwegian unemployment insurance (UI) system, we show that activity-oriented UI regimes - i.e., regimes with a high likelihood of required participa-tion in active labor market programs, duration limitations on unconditional UI entitlements, and high...

This overview report on flexibility and competitiveness for Finland starts with an outline of the performance and consequent restructuring of the Finnish economy over the past two decades. It then continues with a presentation and discussion of Finnish technology policy and the ICT miracle of...