the long run effects of unemployment monitoring and work search programs experimental evidence from the united kingdom this article examines the long run effects of the restart unemployment program in the united kingdom the program aimed at the long term unemployed involved a combination of tighter monitoring of benefit eligibility rules and increased job search assistance we compare the employment behavior of a treatment group who participated in the scheme with that of a randomly chosen control group for whom participation was delayed while there is little evidence of a long term benefit for women the unemployment rate among males in the treatment group was six percentage points lower than that of the control group 5 years after the initial experiment

old problems in the new solutions politically motivated allocation of program benefits and the new fertilizer subsidies summary fertilizer subsidies have been reinstituted in many african countries with innovations seeking to avoid the downsides of past programs the new subsidy paradigm however does not address how to curtail political manipulation which exacerbated inefficiencies of previous programs this paper analyzes whether politics affected voucher allocations in ghana s 2008 fertilizer subsidy program we find that more vouchers were targeted to districts that the ruling party had lost in the previous presidential elections and more so in districts that had been lost by a higher percentage margin this evidence shows that a significant threat to the efficiency of fertilizer subsidies remains

experimental evidence on unemployment insurance work search policies this paper describes findings from an experimental evaluation of alternative work search policies in the unemployment insurance ui program we find that the no work search treatment significantly increased ui receipt relative to the standard work search approach by 3 3 weeks and 265 per claimant and that the treatment with the most intensive requirements reduced ui payments by one half of a week or 70 per claimant the results suggest that work search requirements reduce ui spells by increasing the nonmonetary costs of remaining on ui rather than enhancing job search abilities we also find little treatment effects for wages earnings or total income suggesting that an increase in the nonmonetary costs of continued ui receipt are associated with more intensive job search rather than a reduction in the reservation wage

does a minimum job search requirement reduce time on unemployment payments evidence from the jobseeker diary in australia this study examines the impact of thejobseeker diary jsd a program designed to increase the job search effort of unemployed persons in australia the jsd program is distinguished by combining a focus on work search verification with large scale imple mentation applying a quasi experimental matching method to data on unemployment spells occurring in 1997 98 the authors find that jsd participation was associated with an increased rate of exit from unemployment payment recipiency and a shorter total time spent on payments payment receipt duration is estimated to have fallen for about one half of jsd participants the largest effects of the jsd occurred for payment recipients for whom labor demand conditions were the most favorable cost benefit analysis suggests a fairly large net societal gain per program participant this study examines a large scale interven tion intended to increase job search ef fort of unemployed persons in australia the intervention the jobseeker diary jsd is a work search verification program that re quires unemployment payment recipients to complete a fortnightly biweekly diary in which details of a specified minimum number of job applications must be recorded the scale of the jsd program and its focus on work search verification make it unique in the international context

assessing the case for social experiments rs ecent academic debates pit two alternative approaches to policy evaluation against one another the first is the experimental approach based on the random assignment of accepted program applicants to a recipient or treatment group and a non recipient or control group the second is the nonexperimental or econometric approach that uses a variety of microdata sources statistical methods and behavioral models to compare the outcomes of participants in social programs with those of nonparticipants the central question addressed in this paper is whether or not randomized social experiments aid in securing answers to basic questions about the evaluation of social programs there are many distinct and complementary approaches to the study of the impact of public policy including full general equilibrium analysis of policy impacts tinbergen 1956 auerbach and kotlikoff 1987 shoven and whalley 1992 kydland and prescott 1991 and less ambitious partial equilibrium microeconomic structural research programs such as those designed to estimate the impact of taxes on labor supply both approaches offer answers to many interesting counterfactual policy questions but their credibility rests critically on the quality of the empirical input used to generate their answers

lessons from the u s unemployment insurance experiments recent social experiments have evaluated two reforms of the unemployment insurance ui system reemployment bonuses and job search programs the bonus experiments show that economic incentives affect the length of ui receipt and provide weak evidence that an earlier return to work does not decrease earnings the experiments do not show the favorability of a permanent bonus program as they ignore its effect on the number of the claimants the job search experiments test several more promising reforms nearly all of the combinations of services and increased enforcement reduce ui receipt and have favorable cost benefit analyses earnings often increase though the estimates are imprecise

the long term effects of job search requirements evidence from the uk jsa reform this paper investigates long term returns from unemployment compensation exploiting variation from the uk jsa reform of 1996 which implied a major increase in job search requirements for eligibility and in the related administrative hurdle search theory predicts that such changes should raise the proportion of non claimant nonemployed with consequences on search effort and labor market attachment and lower the reservation wage of the unemployed with negative effects on post unemployment wages i test these ideas on longitudinal data from social security records llmdb using a difference in differences approach i find that individuals who start an unemployment spell soon after jsa introduction as opposed to six months earlier are 2 5 3 more likely to move from unemployment into incapacity benefits spells and 4 5 less likely to have positive earnings in the following year this latter employment effect only vanishes four years after the initial unemployment shock also annual earnings for the treated individuals are lower than for the non treated these results suggest that while tighter search requirements were successful in moving individuals off unemployment benefits they were not successful in moving them onto long lasting or better jobs with fairly long lasting unintended consequences on a number of labor market outcomes

unemployment insurance and unemployment over time an analysis with event history data using event history data this paper analyzes the distribution of reemployment spell durations conditional on the completed length of the preceding contiguous spell of unemployment the model is used to infer how unemployment insurance through unemployment duration may affect the likelihood of reentering unemployment special attention is paid to the endogeneity between unemployment and reemployment duration and the sample information contained in the fact that some individuals obtain reemployment by recall as opposed to acceptance of a new job copyright 1995 by mit press

on the vote purchasing behavior of incumbent governments a couple of months before the swedish election in 1998 the incumbent government distributed 2 3 billion sek to 42 out of 115 applying municipalities this was the first wave of a four year long grant program intended to support local investment programs aimed at an ecological sustainable development this temporary grant program differs from traditional intergovernmental grants in several aspects most importantly in the sovereign decision making power given to the incumbent central government in this paper we investigate whether there were any tactical motives behind the distribution of these grants we find support for the hypothesis that the incumbent government used the grant program under study in order to win votes in particular we find strong support for the lindbeck weibull dixit londregan model in which parties distribute transfers to regions where there are many swing voters this result is statistically as well as economically significant we do however not find any support for the model that predicts that the incumbent government transfer money to its own supporters

activating unemployed workers works experimental evidence from denmark abstract in a field experiment in two danish counties about half of the unemployed workers were randomly assigned to a mandatory activation program analyzing data from this experiment we show that activation can be very effective in reducing unemployment durations

balanced budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition this paper models balanced budget redistribution between socio economic groups as the outcome of electoral competition between two political parties equilibrium is unique in the present model and a sufficient condition for existence is given requiring that there be enough stochastic heterogeneity with respect to party preferences in the electorate the validity of hotelling s principle of minimum differentiation and of director s law are examined under alternative hypotheses concerning administrative costs of redistributions and voter s possibilities both of abstaining from voting and of becoming campaign activists for one of the parties the policy strategy of expected plurality maximization is contrasted with the strategy of maximizing the probability of gaining a plurality incomes are fixed and known so lump sum taxation is feasible however constraints on tax transfer differentiation between individuals are permitted in the analysis

redistributive politics and economic efficiency the political process often compensates the losers from technical change or international competition in an economically inefficient way namely by subsidizing or protecting declining industries instead of encouraging the movement of resources to other more productive uses we find that a dynamic inconsistency in the game of redistributive politics contributes to this outcome to achieve economically efficient outcomes it is necessary that those making economically inefficient choices not be given offsetting transfers but the political process distributes income on the basis of political characteristics which are in general different from the economic characteristics that are rewarded by the market we identify circumstances in which the inefficient choosers have desirable political characteristics and are therefore immune from threats of having to face the economic consequences of their choices

estimating the effect of counseling and monitoring the unemployed using a job search model this paper examines the impact of the counseling and monitoring program for the unemployed with particular reference to their job finding rate application intensity and matching probability the effectiveness of counseling and monitoring is measured by using a job search model in which the job finding rate is equal to the product of the application intensity and the matching probability counseling and monitoring is an intensive job search assistance program designed to help unemployed people receiving unemployment benefits to find a job as quickly as possible the empirical analysis is based on data from a social experiment a sample of the inflow into unemployment was randomly assigned to a treatment and a control group the empirical results based on formal reduced form models show that counseling and monitoring does reduce the time taken to find a job because people participating in the program make more applications than those who are not participating although no differences are found in matching probabilities

experimental evidence on the effects of early meetings and activation we analyze the effects of four randomized social experiments involving early and intensive active labour market policy conducted in denmark in 2008 the experiments entailed different combinations of early and intensive treatment in terms of meetings and active labour market programmes we find that frequent meetings between newly unemployed workers and case workers can increase employment rates over the next two years by up to 10 weeks the effects continue to grow over the whole 4 year horizon studied for men we find evidence of a threat effect of having to participate in early active labour market programmes while no such effect is found for women we conduct a cost benefit analysis of each ofthe four experiments and find that meetings yield the largest net benefits

how the electoral college influences campaigns and policy the probability of being florida this paper analyzes how us presidential candidates should allocate resources across states to maximize the probability of winning the election by developing and estimating a probabilistic voting model of political competition under the electoral college system actual campaigns act in close agreement with the model there is a 0 9 correlation between equilibrium and actual presidential campaign visits across states both in 2000 and 2004 the paper shows how presidential candidate attention is affected by the states number of electoral votes forecasted state election outcomes and forecast uncertainty it also analyzes the effects of a direct national popular vote for president

impact of reemployment bonuses on insured unemployment in the new jersey and illinois separate social experiments conducted in new jersey and illinois tested the effect of offering unemployment insurance ui claimants a cash bonus for rapid reemployment the illinois bonus was constant over time while the new jersey bonus declined over time so that the bonus received was greater the earlier that reemployment occurred this paper compares the effects of the bonus offers on the rate at which claimants exited ui the new jersey and illinois bonus offers generated similar increases in the ui exit rate during the period in which claimants could qualify for the bonus however the declining new jersey bonus had little impact on long term claimants who exhausted their ui benefits in contrast the constant illinois bonus had a substantial impact on long term claimants thereby reducing the rate at which claimants exhausted their ui benefits this finding at least partly explains why the illinois bonus had a larger impact on ui receipt than the new jersey bonus

how to help unemployed find jobs quickly experimental evidence from a mandatory activation program abstract this paper investigates how a mandatory activation program in denmark affects the job finding rate of unemployed workers the activation program was introduced in an experimental setting where about half of the workers who became unemployed in the period from november 2005 to march 2006 were randomly assigned to the program while the other half was not it appears that the activation program is very effective the median unemployment duration of the control group is 14 weeks while it is 11 5 weeks for the treatment group the analysis shows that the job finding rate in the treatment group is 30 higher than in the control group this result is mainly driven by the more intensive contacts between the unemployed and the public employment service

evaluating the econometric evaluations of training programs with experimental data this paper takes the results of an employment and training program thatwas run as a field experiment in which the participants were randomlyassigned into a treatment or a control group and compares these results to the estimates that might have been produced by an econometrician who evaluated the program using the same econometric procedures that have been used in the program evaluation literature this comparison shows that many of these econometric procedures fail toreplicate the experimentally determined results and suggests that researchers should be aware of the potential for specification errorsin other nonexperimental evaluations copyright 1986 by american economic association

the impact of being offered and receiving classroom training on the employment histories of disadvantaged women evidence from experimental data we address two questions using experimental data on disadvantaged women first what is the impact of being offered jtpa classroom training on the duration of unemployment and employment second what is the effect of actually participating in this training on the length of such spells belonging to the treatment group shortens unemployment spells but has no effect on employment spells actually participating in training has a larger positive effect on the exit rate from unemployment than the effect of simply being a member of the treatment group ignoring the endogeneity of actual training in estimation substantially underestimates its effect

the observer effect in international politics evidence from a natural experiment by pressuring governments to hold democratic elections and by becoming directly involved in the electoral process through technical assistance and funding or as election monitors international actors now play a visible role in domestic elections and other democratic processes throughout the developing world although scholars have documented several macrolevel relationships between international level variables and movement toward democracy there has been little attention paid to the microlevel effects of international involvement in the democratization process this article examines the effects of international election observation as a prominent form of international involvement in domestic elections and exploits a natural experiment in order to test whether international observers reduce election fraud using data from the 2003 presidential elections in armenia the article demonstrates that although observers may not eliminate election fraud they can reduce election day fraud at the polling stations they visit the unusual advantage of experiment like conditions for this study offers unique causal evidence that international actors can have direct measurable effects on the level of election day fraud and by extension on the democratization process

the displacement effect of reemployment bonus programs we develop a partial equilibrium matching model of the labor market in order to examine whether adoption of a reemployment bonus would displace workers not offered the bonus we examine the displacement effect for a unemployment insurance ui eligible workers who are offered but do not find a job in time to qualify for a bonus and b ui ineligible workers who are never offered a bonus the model predicts minimal displacement of the former group but for the latter group the model predicts an increase in unemployment duration of 2 4 week and an increase in unemployment of up to 2 per thousand

election goals and income redistribution recent evidence from albania this paper examines the impact of political competition on block grants from federal to sub federal levels of government we model the extent and direction of income redistribution as determined proximately by the political agendas of central decision makers and at a deeper level by the institutions within which they nd themselves operating we contrast two political objective functions that yield di erent empirical predictions of the ways in which politics should a ect scal policy lessons learned here may prove important in understanding limits on the types of redistribution possible via block grants given the institutional framework in both developing and developed countries 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classixcation h1 h7 o1

unemployment duration and the restart effect some experimental evidence in this paper we analyse the effect of ihe restart programme in the united kingdom this programme consisis of an interview of tbe long term unemployed to counsel them on effective job search failure to attend the interview carries the threat of the cessation of unemployment benefits the results using experimental data indicate that the programme has a significant effect of reducing unemployment duration estimation of an independent competing risks model distinguishing between exits from unemployment to a job a training placement or to signing off unemployment benefit shows that the channels through which restart works differs according to exit type

varieties of clientelism machine politics during elections although many studies of clientelism focus exclusively on vote buying political machines often employ diverse portfolios of strategies we provide a theoretical framework and formal model to explain how and why machines mix four clientelist strategies during elections vote buying turnout buying abstention buying and double persuasion machines tailor their portfolios to the political preferences and voting costs of the electorate they also adapt their mix to at least five contextual factors compulsory voting ballot secrecy political salience machine support and political polarization our analysis yields numerous insights such as why the introduction of compulsory voting may increase vote buying and why enhanced ballot secrecy may increase turnout buying and abstention buying evidence from various countries is consistent with our predictions and suggests the need for empirical studies to pay closer attention to the ways in which machines combine clientelist strategies

the electoral benefits of unemployment clientelism and distributive politics abstract we show that in the month prior to the 2003 argentine presidential election the expenditures of an argentine poverty relief program exhibit a partisan bias taking into consideration the number of potential recipients the unemployed with children 18 years old or less the counties that were ideologically against the incumbent received a disproportionately large amount of the spending hence instead of targeting swing or core districts as established in the distributive politics literature in argentina the incumbent targeted opposition strongholds to identify these effects and to classify districts into swing core and opposition ones we exploit the 2001 crises in argentina in particular we use the 2001 political discontent that led to 15 of blank and null votes to estimate swing districts finally we also show that this tactical spending had an electoral purpose in counties where it was arguably cheaper to monitor the recipients voting behavior the spending was significantly larger in return the clientelist exchange took place in districts with greater spending and monitoring thus the politicians incentives to design an appropriate poverty relief program may be at odds with their electoral motivation

distributive politics with vote and turnout buying the objective of this paper is to model the incumbent s allocation of efforts that maximize his electoral chances in the presence of both vote buying persuasion and turnout buying mobilization the existing literature on distributive politics concludes that political candidates should concentrate their campaigning efforts either on safe districts or on swing districts this paper shows that when candidates can use both persuasion and mobilization strategies and the ideology of voters is unknown to the incumbent party a third option should be taken into account in fact the optimal allocation of resources rather than focusing on safe or swing districts should target opposition strongholds that is the incumbent should try to sway voters in those districts in which the challenger is favored the intuition for this result is simple since the incumbent does not know individual preferences he only observes the distribution of preferences in the districts all voters in a given district look identical to him hence when approaching voters in a district to buy their vote the incumbent always faces the risk of buying the vote of his supporters who would have voted for him anyway

distributive politics and conditional cash transfers the case of brazil s bolsa familia summary brazilian politicians have long relied on pork and clientelism to win political support and recent literature suggests that little has changed however researchers have yet to systematically investigate whether political criteria influence the distribution of funds through bolsa familia this is especially surprising given the program s prominence in the international community in this paper i examine whether political criteria explain the federal government s distribution of bolsa familia i find little evidence that political criteria explain the difference between the number of poor families that live in a municipality and the number of families that receive support i conclude by discussing the broader significance of this large programmatic policy to brazil s political development

bond restructuring and moral hazard are collective action clauses costly abstract recent emerging market crises have prompted debate over the costs and benefits of collective action clauses cacs in bond contracts cacs may facilitate the restructuring of repayment terms in the event of financial distress proponents of cacs argue they should lower borrowing costs while opponents contend that they lead to moral hazard and increased borrowing costs this paper examines the pricing of bonds with and without cacs using data for both primary and secondary market yields and finds no evidence that the presence of cacs has increased yields for either higher or lower rated issuers

the effectiveness of public sponsored training revisited the importance of data and methodological choices this article revisits the effectiveness of public sponsored training programs for germany accounting for dynamic selection into heterogeneous programs we carefully assess to what extent various aspects of our empirical strategy such as conditioning flexibly on employment and benefit histories the availability of rich data handling of later program participations and further methodological choices affect our estimates our results imply pronounced negative lock in effects in the short run and positive medium run effects on employment and earnings when job seekers enroll after having been unemployed for some time we find that data and specification issues can have a large effect

what wins votes why some politicians opt out of clientelism in a context where clientelism is widespread why do some politicians choose not to condition the delivery of goods and services to citizens on individual political behavior i argue that the answer to this question lies in the heretofore unexamined electoral costs of clientelism clientelism decreases support from nonpoor constituents even while it generates votes from among the poor taking into account these costs and other factors that shape politician incentives i posit that the interaction between political competition and poverty will explain variation in clientelism i test this claim using an original measure of clientelism that assesses mayoral involvement in social policy implementation in argentine municipalities the results of statistical analysis suggest that high levels of political competition are compatible with clientelism when poverty is also high only when high competition is coupled with low rates of poverty does clientelism decline

can helping the sick hurt the able incentives information and disruption in a welfare reform the uk jobcentre plus reform sharpened bureaucratic incentives to help disability benefit recipients relative to unemployment insurance recipients into jobs in the long run the policy raised exits off diasability benefits by 10 and left unemployment outflows roughly unchanged consistent with i beneficial effects of reorganising welfare offices for both groups and ii a shift in bureaucrats efforts towards getting disability benefit recipients into jobs relative to those on unemployment benefit the policy accounted for about 30 of the decline in the aggregate disability rolls between 2003 and 2008 in the short run however we detect a reduction in unemployment exits and no effect on disability exits suggesting important initial disruption effects from the big reorganisation this highlights the difficulty of welfare reform as policymakers may focus on the short run political costs rather than the long run economic benefits

structural empirical evaluation of job search monitoring to evaluate search effort monitoring of unemployed workers it is important to take account of post unemployment wages and job to job mobility we structurally estimate a model with search channels using a controlled trial in which monitoring is randomized the data include registers and survey data on search behavior we find that the opportunity to move to better paid jobs in employment reduces the extent to which monitoring induces substitution toward formal search channels in unemployment job mobility compensates for adverse long run effects of monitoring on wages we examine counterfactual policies against moral hazard like reemployment bonuses and changes of the benefits path