Unemployment Benefit Exhaustion

Purpose: This systematic review studied the impact of exhaustion of unemployment benefits on the exit rate out of unemployment and into employment prior to benefit exhaustion or shortly thereafter. Method: We followed Campbell Collaboration guidelines to prepare this review, and ultimately located 12 studies for final analysis and interpretation. Twelve studies could be included in the data synthesis. Results: We found clear evidence that the prospect of exhaustion of benefits results in a significantly increased incentive for finding work. Discussion: The theoretical suggestion that the prospect of exhaustion of benefits results in an increased incentive for finding work has been confirmed empirically by measures from seven different European countries, the United States, and Canada. The results are robust in the sense that sensitivity analyses evidenced no appreciable changes in the results. We found no strong indication of the presence of publication bias.</p

Do Labour Market Programmes Speed up the Return to Work?

We evaluate the impact of labour market programmes on unemployment durations in Norway, by means of a distribution-free mixed proportional competing risks hazard rate model. We find that programme participation, once completed, improves employment prospects, but that there is often an opportunity cost in the form of a lock-in effect during participation. The average net effect of programme participation on the length of the job search period is found to be around zero. For participants with poor employment prospects, the favourable post-programme effects outweigh the negative lock-in effects. Copyright 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.