The Threat of Monitoring Job Search. A Discontinuity Design

Since July 2004 the job search effort of long-term unemployed benefit claimants is monitored in Belgium. We exploit the discontinuity in the treatment assignment at the age of 30 to evaluate the effect of a notification sent at least 8 months before job search is verified. The threat of monitoring increases transitions to employment, but of lower quality. In the less prosperous region, Wallonia, the impact is smaller, despite of the presence of specific counseling for the notified workers, and more heterogeneous. Moreover, in this region, the threat induces women to substitute sickness for unemployment benefits.evaluation, monitoring job-search, threat effect, regression-discontinuity, grouped data.

Monitoring, Sanctions and Front-Loading of Job Search in a Non-Stationary Model

We develop and estimate a non-stationary job search model to evaluate a scheme that monitors job search effort and sanctions insured unemployed whose effort is deemed insuffcient. The model reveals that such schemes provide incentives to the unemployed to front-load search effort prior to monitoring. This causes the job finding rate to increase above the post sanction level. After validating the model both internally and externally, we conclude that the scheme is effective in raising the job finding rate with minor wage losses. A basic cost-benefit analysis demonstrates that welfare losses for the unemployed are compensated by net efficiency gains for public authorities and society.Monitoring, sanctions, non-stationary job search, unemployment benefits, structural estimation.

Les constituants de la pédagogie active : quand théorie, pratique et empirie s’unissent pour apporter un nouvel éclairage

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A complete decomposition of unemployment dynamics using longitudinal grouped duration data

In this paper, we study the unemployment dynamics in the Belgian regions, Flanders and Wallonia, on the basis of aggregate stratified data covering the period 1973-93. We decompose the aggregate exit probability from unemployment into calendar time and, both observed and unobserved, compositional effects. We find that changes in the inflow composition affect the cyclical fluctuations in unemployment duration only marginally. However, the long-run improvement in the quality of entrants into unemployment, notably in terms of educational attainment, mitigates the strong upward trend in this duration. This is a new result as none of the existing studies purges the trend in the aggregate outflow rate of the variation in its composition. We also conclude that in Belgium, incidence explains as much as 45% of the evolution of unemployment. Finally, the diverging evolution of unemployment across Flanders and Wallonia predominantly results from a stronger decline in the exit rates from unemployment in Wallonia

The design of active labour market policies: what matters and what doesn’t?

A first objective of this paper is to emphasise the role of a correct diagnosis of unemployment persistence for the design of effective active labour market policies. A second is to stress the importance of adequate incentives to programme administrators of active labour market policies, and that this may well be more important than providing adequate incentives to the unemployed. To illustrate this, we summarise two case studies evaluating active labour market policies in Belgium. The first one evaluates a work experience programme for welfare recipients. The second one analyses the short-term effect of vocational training programmes for unemployed workers on the probability of leaving unemployment. Finally, we invite economists to think harder about well designed performance-standards systems. We provide some guidelines for this research programme