Using novel data on unemployment benefits and active labor market policies in 191 countries in 2019 and 2020, this paper investigates the patterns of unemployment benefits and active labor market policies and their relationship with labor market outcomes. This study is unique in that it covers a...

The European Commission has for many years advocated fiscal policies in order to improve the employability of young people. This paper aims at providing a preliminary rough estimate of the cost-effectiveness of rebates on social security contributions granted to employers that Italy has utilized...

The long-term unemployed sometimes lack basic soft skills needed to enter and succeed in the labor market. We examine whether it is possible to develop or enhance these skills among adults by using a large-scale randomized control trial (RCT) to evaluate the effectiveness of an Active Labor...

Background: COVID-19 and its preventive measures affect not only the state of public health but also the economy. The economic impact of COVID-19 varies depending on age, and it is argued that young people have experienced the greatest negative impacts. Methods: This study was an analysis of the...

The long-term unemployed sometimes lack basic soft skills needed to enter and succeed in the labor market. We examine whether it is possible to develop or enhance these skills among adults by using a large-scale randomized control trial (RCT) to evaluate the effectiveness of an Active Labor...

We study how licensing, certification and unionisation affect the wages of natives and migrants and their representation among licensed, certified, and unionized workers. We provide evidence of a dual role of labor market institutions, which both screen workers based on unobservable...

Denmark has accepted refugees from a large variety of countries and for more than four decades. Denmark has also frequently changed policies and regulations concerning integration programs, transfer payments, and conditions for permanent residency. Such policy variation in conjunction with...

This paper presents and describes a new database of major minimum wage and collective bargaining reforms covering 26 advanced economies over the period 1970-2020. The main advantage of this dataset is the precise identification of the nature and date of major reforms, which is valuable in many...

Labor regulations are important determinants of resource allocation, productivity, and labor market outcomes. They can protect workers' rights, enhance job security, and improve working conditions. However, overly restrictive regulations can also increase business costs, becoming barriers to...

This research documents employment opportunities of labour-market entrants during the COVID-19 crisis in the Netherlands. Two recent cohorts of graduates are studied and compared to two preCOVID-19 cohorts: the 2019 cohort was unexpectedly hit by the COVID-19 crisis about six months after...

This paper evaluates the impact on employment probabilities of two training programs funded by the European Social Fund in the province of Bolzano, Italy. The programs were addressed to particularly vulnerable groups which were much less skilled and educated than the control group from the...

We evaluate a temporary public sector employment program targeted at individuals with weak labor market attachment, applying dynamic inverse probability weighting to account for dynamic selection. We show that the program is successful in increasing employment and reducing social assistance....

Comparative welfare state research has mostly examined the outcomes of active labour market policies and work-family reconciliation policies separately. As a result, potential complementarities between these policy areas have received scant attention empirically. Using macro-level data, this...

Our paper aims at improving the understanding for the role of public employment agencies in job matching. We analyze the effects of the restructuring of the Federal Employment Agency in Germany (Hartz III labor market reform) for aggregate matching and unemployment. Based on two microeconomic...

This paper analyzes the heterogeneous effects of monetary policy on workers with differing levels of labor force attachment. Exploiting variation in labor market tightness across metropolitan areas, we show that the employment of populations with lower labor force attachment - Blacks, high...

Subsidizing the geographical mobility of unemployed workers may improve welfare by relaxing their financial constraints and allowing them to find jobs in more prosperous regions. We exploit regional variation in the promotion of mobility programs along administrative borders of German employment...

The existing burnout literature has predominantly focussed on the determinants of burnout, whereas its consequences for individual careers have received little attention. In this study, we investigate whether recently burned-out individuals and persons with a very high risk of clinical burnout...

This paper evaluates the impact on employment probabilities of two training programs funded by the European Social Fund in the province of Bolzano, Italy. The programs were addressed to particularly vulnerable groups which were much less skilled and educated than the control group from the...

Short-time work - a wage subsidy conditional on hour reductions - has become an important tool of labor market policy in many European countries. As the scope of these policies expanded, concerns about side effects due to adverse selection increased. We develop a model of job retention policies...

This paper surveys the emerging economics literature on the relationship between employee training and firm performance. Most studies find very high returns to training, at least from the perspective of firms, indicating that the costs of training can be recouped in short periods of time. These...

The existing burnout literature has predominantly focussed on the determinants of burnout, whereas its consequences for individual careers have received little attention. In this study, we investigate whether recently burned-out individuals and persons with a very high risk of clinical burnout...

We study the effect of an increase in the UK state pension age from 65 to 66, a high level internationally, on labour market activity. Despite there being limited financial incentives to retire at the state pension age, we find large effects: the employment rate of 65-year-olds increased by 7.4...

Within the past decades, employment precariousness has emerged as an alarming phenomenon afflicting labor markets across Europe. While the spread of job insecurity can be traced to specific mechanisms and processes triggered by recent macroeconomic developments, evidence shows how mainstream...

During the last decade, unemployment in Greece climbed up to 28%, almost quadrupling due to the economic crisis that hit Greece. In the present paper, we examine the determinants of the unemployment dynamics and the impact of the minimum wage on the probability of making a transition into and...

Hiring subsidies are widely used to create (stable) employment for the long-term unemployed. This paper exploits the abolition of a hiring subsidy targeted at long-term unemployed jobseekers older than 45 years of age in Belgium to evaluate its effectiveness in the short and medium run. Based on...

The working poor were long thought of as people toiling away in lousy, under-protected and underpaid jobs in places like fast-food joints, supermarkets, hotels and bars. The perfidious consequence of that perception was that in-work poverty was seen as a non-issue in countries with extensive...

The pandemic has mainly affected the state of health and mortality, but has also had effects on the economy and the labor market. This article reports what happened to the total number of employees, their distribution by sectors and regions and changes in the number of employees for different...

Activation policies to promote self-sufficiency among recipients of welfare and other types of benefits are becoming more common in many welfare states. We evaluate a law change in Norway making welfare receipt conditional on participation in an activation program for all welfare recipients...

This paper studies the impact on the length of school-to-work transition of a reform that extended from two to three years the short vocational track in Italy in the early 2000s. In the empirical analysis we use the Two Way Fixed Effect methodology to estimate the impact of the reform,...