Active labor market policies and crime

Active labor market programs continue to receive high priority in wealthy countries despite the fact that the benefits appear small relative to the costs. This apparent discrepancy suggests that the programs may have a broader purpose than simply increasing employment—for instance, preventing anti-social behavior such as crime. Indeed, recent evidence shows that participation in active labor market programs reduces crime among unemployed young men. The existence of such effects could explain why it is the income-redistributing countries with greater income equality that spend the most on active labor market programs

Job Search and Savings: Wealth Effects and Duration Dependence

In this paper we consider a risk averse worker who is moving back and forth between employment and unemployment; layoffs are random and beyond the worker’s influence, while the re-employment chance is directly affected by search effort. We characterize the worker’s optimal savings and job-search behavior as well as the resulting consumption paths and wealth formation. In general, all decisions will depend on the current level of wealth: First, the choice of search effort increases as wealth decreases, a finding which is in accordance with our empirical duration analysis using micro data on unemployment spells. Second, consumption increases with wealth both when the worker is employed and unemployed. Third, savings provide insurane against income fluctuations but this insurance is not perfect; precautionary savings are built up during employment spells and run down during unemployment spells but the consumption path is never going to be completely smooth over states. Finally, our results suggest that the worker’s search intensity and hence the probability of leaving unemployment will exhibit positive duration dependence over unemployment spells via its inverse relationship with the worker’s wealth.Search, consumption smooting, duration dependence

The Effect of Workfare Policy on Crime

In this paper, we focus on a novel and potentially important aspect of the workfare policy in the Danish labor market, namely its effect on crime. We do this by exploiting two policy changes. First, we examine the effect of a series of national welfare reforms introduced during the 1990s. Those reforms strengthened the work requirement for the young welfare recipients and were introduced gradually, starting with younger welfare participants first. We exploit the differential introduction of workfare reform across different age groups as the exogenous variation. Second, we use a unique policy experiment that began in 1987 by an innovative mayor of the Danish city of Farum, where he imposed a 100 % work or training requirement for all welfare recipients immediately from the date of enrollment. By comparing the changes in crime rates among the welfare recipients in Farum before and after 1987 with that of the rest of Denmark, we identify the effect of workfare on the crime rate. Our results show a dramatic decline in the arrest rate among welfare recipients after the introduction of the stronger workfare requirements, both at the national level and in Farum. Those results imply a strong and significant crime reducing effect of the workfare policy.Workfare, Crime, Welfare

Voluntary Public Unemployment Insurance

Voluntary public unemployment systems are limited to a handful of countries, including Finland, Sweden, and, more substantially, Denmark. A voluntary system has the positive feature of other user-cost schemes, potentially efficient targeting of services. This presumes rational behavior as well as reasonable risk rating of premiums and the absence of worker access to alternative social programs. Using a 10 per cent sample of the Danish population drawn from administrative data, we exploit the voluntary Danish system to explore the structure of unemployment insurance demand. The insurance take-up rate is surprisingly high, 80 percent in 1995, but varies systematically with economic incentives in a way that raises doubts about the targeting value of the current system. Political support for the Danish system may derive instead from the fact that a universal, compulsory system would generate rather modest additional net funds and with a twist--additional revenue would come disproportionately from low-wage workers.

Optimal Workfare in a Society of Workers and Non-Workers

Most workers are only partially insured against unemployment. One reason is that high unemployment compensation creates a free rider problem when monitoring of job search behavior is limited; people who do not seek employment (non-workers) may nevertheless collect unemployment compensation. We show that unproductive workfare for unemployed workers may improve unemployment insurance if workers and non-workers value leisure differently. If they differ only with respect to productivity workfare has to be based on a productivity related task requirement (task workfare); a simple time requirement (time workfare) is not enough. Task workfare is simply a better screening device, also implying that task workfare Pareto dominates time workfare. Finally, we show that the scope for using workfare is larger the smaller are the transfers from workers to non-workers.

The effect of workfare policy on crime

In this paper, we focus on a novel and potentially important aspect of the workfare policy in the Danish labor market, namely its effect on crime. We do this by exploiting two policy changes. First, we examine the effect of a series of national welfare reforms introduced during the 1990s. Those reforms strengthened the work requirement for the young welfare recipients and were introduced gradually, starting with younger welfare participants first. We exploit the differential introduction of workfare reform across different age groups as the exogenous variation. Second, we use a unique policy experiment that began in 1987 by an innovative mayor of the Danish city of Farum, where he imposed a 100 % work or training requirement for all welfare recipients immediately from the date of enrollment. By comparing the changes in crime rates among the welfare recipients in Farum before and after 1987 with that of the rest of Denmark, we identify the effect of workfare on the crime rate

Efficient Competition With Small Numbers -- With Applications to Privatisation and Mergers

This paper studies competition between a small number of suppliers and a single buyer (or an auction with a small number of bidders and a single seller), when total demand (supply) is uncertain. It is well known that when a small number of suppliers compete in supply functions the service is not provided efficiently. We show that production efficiency is obtained if suppliers compete in simple two-part bid functions. However, profits are not eliminated. Moreover, the buyers' (sellers') decision regarding how much to buy is not efficient. We also show that suppliers (bidders in an auction) always have an incentive to merge (form bidding rings) in this setting.

To What Extent do Fiscal Regimes Equalize Opportunities for Income Acquisition Among Citizens?

This project employs the theory of equality of opportunity, described in Roemer's book (Equality of Opportunity, Harvard University Press, 1998), to compute the extent to which tax-and-transfer regimes in ten countries equalize opportunities among citizens for income acquisition. Roughly speaking, equality of opportunity for incomes has been achieved in a country when it is the case that the distributions of post-fisc income are the same for different types of citizen, where a citizen's type is defined by the socioeconomic status of his parents. Intuitively, a country will have equalized opportunity if the chances of earning high (or low) income are equal for citizens from all family backgrounds. Of course, pre-fisc income distributions, by type, will not be identical, as long as the educational system does not entirely make up for the disadvantage that children, who come from poor families face, but the tax-and-transfer system can play a role in rectifying that inequality. We include, in our computation, two numbers that summarize the extent to which each country's current fiscal regime achieves equalization of opportunities for income, and the deadweight loss that would be incurred by moving to the regime that does.

To what extent do fiscal regimes equalize opportunities for income acquisition among citizens?.

This paper employs the theory of equality of opportunity, described in Roemer’s book (Equality of Opportunity, Harvard University Press, 1998), to compute the extent to which tax-and-transfer regimes in 11 countries equalize opportunities among citizens for income acquisition. Roughly speaking, equality of opportunity for incomes has been achieved in a country when it is the case that the distributions of post-fisc income are the same for different types of citizen, where a citizen’s type is defined by the socio-economic status of his parents. Intuitively, a country will have equalized opportunity if the chances of earning high (or low) income are equal for citizens from all family backgrounds. Of course, pre-fisc income distributions, by type, will not be identical, as long as the educational system does not entirely make up for the disadvantage that children, who come from poor families face, but the tax-and-transfer system can play a role in rectifying that inequality. We include, in our computation, two numbers that summarize the extent to which each country’s current fiscal regime achieves equalization of opportunities for income, and the deadweight loss that would be incurred by moving to the regime that does.Fiscal regimes; Equal opportunities; Income acquisition;

To what extent do fiscal regimes equalize opportunities for income acquisitions among citizens?

This project employs the theory of opportunity, described in Roemer''s book (Equality of Opportunity, Harvard University Press, 1998), to compute the extent to which tax-and-transfer regimes in ten countries equalize opportunities among citizens for income acquisition. Roughly speaking, equality of opportunity for incomes has been achieved in a country when it is the case that the distributions of post-fisc income are the same for different types of citizen, where a citizen''s type is defined by the socio-economic status of his parents. Intuitively, a country will have equalized opportunity if the chances of earning high (or low) income are equal for citizens from all family backgrounds. Of course, pre-fisc income distributions, by type, will not be identical, as long as the educational system does not entirely make up for the disadvantage that children, who come from poor families face, but the tax-and-transfer system can play a role in rectifying that inequality. We include, in our computation, two numbers that summarize the extent to which each country''s current fiscal regime achieves equalization of opportunities for income, and the deadweight loss that would be incurred by moving to the regime that does