The effectiveness of the restart programme and enterprise allowance scheme

Abstract

The Restart programme and the Enterprise Allowance Scheme were introduced in the eighties to combat the high levels and the persistence of unemployment. This paper uses aggregate time series to investigate whether these measures have been important determinants of the overall and duration-specific outflow rates from unemployment. Careful exploration of the data precedes model specification and selection to ensure that the regression results mirror a stable economic relationship other over the sample period. These results show, besides a minor role for the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, that the introduction of the Restart programme has contributed greatly to the cure of partial hysteresis in Britain