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

who suffers the penalty a panel data analysis of earnings gaps in vietnam in spite of its predominant economic weight in developing countries little is known about the informal sector earnings structure compared to that of the formal sector taking advantage of the rich vhlss dataset in vietnam in particular its three wave panel data 2002 2004 2006 we assess the magnitude of various formal informal earnings gaps while addressing heterogeneity at three different levels the worker the job wage employment vs self employment and the earnings distribution we estimate fixed effects and quantile regressions to control for unobserved individual characteristics our results suggest that the informal sector earnings gap highly depends on the workers job status and on their relative position in the earnings distribution penalties may in some cases turn into premiums by comparing our results with studies in other developing countries we draw conclusions highlighting vietnam s labour market specificity

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

benefits of a registration policy for microenterprise performance in india this paper evaluates the effects of a voluntary registration policy with government authorities on financial performance of urban microenterprises in the indian manufacturing sector using data from the 2006 world bank survey of indian microenterprises and applying the semi parametric propensity score matching technique we find that being registered leads to significant gains in sales per employee and value added per employee large gains are also noted for male owned firms those operating with or without paid labor and those operating outside of the owner s home

market clearing with stochastic security part i formulation the first of this two paper series formulates a stochastic security constrained multi period electricity market clearing problem with unit commitment the stochastic security criterion accounts for a pre selected set of random generator and line outages with known historical failure rates and involuntary load shedding as optimization variables unlike the classical deterministic reserve constrained unit commitment here the reserve services are determined by economically penalizing the operation of the market by the expected load not served the proposed formulation is a stochastic programming problem that optimizes concurrently with the pre contingency social welfare the expected operating costs associated with the deployment of the reserves following the contingencies this stochastic programming formulation is solved in the second companion paper using mixed integer linear programming methods two cases are presented a small transmission constrained three bus network scheduled over a horizon of four hours and the ieee reliability test system scheduled over 24 h the impact on the resulting generation and reserve schedules of transmission constraints and generation ramp limits of demand side reserve of the value of load not served and of the constitution of the pre selected set of contingencies are assessed

measuring the benefits of delayed price responsive demand in reducing wind uncertainty costs demand response has benefits in mitigating unit commitment and dispatch costs imposed on power systems by wind uncertainty and variability we examine the effect of delays in consumers responding to price signals on the benefits of demand response in mitigating wind uncertainty costs using a case study based on the ercot power system we compare the cost of operating the system with forecasts of future wind availability to a best case scenario with perfect foresight of wind we demonstrate that wind uncertainty can impose substantive costs on the system and that demand response can eliminate more than 75 of these costs if loads respond to system conditions immediately otherwise we find that with a 30 min lag in the response nearly 72 of the value of demand response is lost

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

punitive sanctions and the transition rate from welfare to work in the netherlands the average exit rate out of welfare is dramatically low most welfare recipients have to comply with guidelines on job search effort that are imposed by the welfare agency if they do not then a sanction in the form of a temporary benefit reduction can be imposed this article investigates the effect of such sanctions on the transition rate from welfare to work using a unique set of rich register data on welfare recipients we find that the imposition of sanctions substantially increases the individual transition rate from welfare to work

firm level corruption in vietnam abstractthis article uses panel data from a survey of small and medium sized enterprises in vietnam to uncover which firms pay bribes and which do not we also study how bribe paying evolved between 2005 and 2007 and test how the determinants of bribes changed between the two years three sets of insights emerge first bribe incidence is highly associated with firm level differences in visibility sunk costs ability to pay and some but not all types of interaction with public officials second the magnitudes of bribes are distinctly higher for firms which get preferential tax benefits and government contracts third the observed decrease in bribe incidence between 2005 and 2007 is largely driven by significant behavioral changes these behavioral changes seem to be associated with policy initiatives to improve law enforcement and increased media focus on punitive actions against corruption

interfirm relationships and informal credit in vietnam trading relations in vietnam s emerging private sector are shaped by two market frictions the difficulty of locating trading partners and the absence of legal enforcement of contracts examining relational contracting we find that a firm trusts its customer enough to offer credit when the customer finds it hard to locate an alternative supplier a longer duration of trading relationship is associated with larger credit as is prior information gathering customers identified through business networks receive more credit these network effects are enduring suggesting that networks are used to sanction defaulting customers

uncertainty management in the unit commitment problem uncertainty in power systems operations has been traditionally managed by multistage decision making and operating reserve requirements a familiar example of multistage decisions is day ahead unit commitment and real time economic dispatch an alternate approach for managing uncertainty is a stochastic formulation which allows the explicit modeling of the sources of uncertainty this paper compares stochastic and reserve methods and evaluates the benefits of a combined approach for the efficient management of uncertainty in the unit commitment problem numerical studies show that unit commitment solutions obtained for the combined approach are robust and superior with respect to the traditional approach in terms of both economics and reliability metrics

the effect of unemployment insurance sanctions on the transition rate from unemployment to employment sanctions or punitive benefits reductions are increasingly used as a tool to enforce compliance of unemployment insurance claimants with search requirements this article analyses sanctions using a unique administrative data set of individuals who started collecting unemployment insurance in the netherlands in 1992 after correction for selectivity in the imposition of sanctions we find that sanctions substantially raise individual re employment rates

market clearing with stochastic security part ii case studies this paper analyzes the market clearing formulation with stochastic security developed in its companion paper through two case studies solved using mixed integer linear programming techniques the generation and reserve schedules as well as the nodal prices of energy and security are assessed under various conditions such as a line flow limits b when nonspinning reserve is excluded from the formulation c demand side valuation of energy not served d generator ramping limits and e the set of pre selected contingencies

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

incorporating fuel constraints and electricity spot prices into the stochastic unit commitment problem the electric power industry is going through deregulation as a result the load on the generating units of a utility is becoming increasingly unpredictable furthermore electric utilities may need to buy power or sell their production to a power pool that serves as a spot market for electricity these trading activities expose utilities to volatile electricity prices in this paper we present a stochastic model for the unit commitment that incorporates power trading into the picture our model also accounts for fuel constraints and prices that may vary with electricity prices and demand the resulting model is a mixed integer program that is solved using lagrangian relaxation and bender s decomposition using this solution approach we solve problems with 729 demand scenarios on a single processor to within 0 1 of the optimal solution in less than 10 minutes our numerical results indicate that significant savings can be achieved when the spot market is entered into the problem and when stochastic policy is adopted instead of a deterministic one

experimental evidence on returns to capital and access to finance in mexico a strong theoretical argument for focusing on access to finance is that financial market imperfections can result in large inefficiencies as firms with productive investment opportunities underinvest lack of access to finance is a frequent complaint of microenterprises which account for a large share of employment in developing countries however assessing the extent to which a lack of capital affects their business profits is complicated by the fact that business investment is likely to be correlated with a host of unmeasured characteristics of the owner and firm such as entrepreneurial ability and demand shocks in a randomized experiment that gave cash and in kind grants to small retail firms providing an exogenous shock to capital the shock generated large increases in profits with the effects concentrated among firms that were more financially constrained the estimated return to capital was at least 20 33 percent a month three to five times higher than market interest rates

releasing constraints to growth or pushing on a string policies and performance of mexican micro firms abstract using firm level data from mexico this paper investigates the firm characteristics associated with participation in credit markets access to training tax payments and membership in business associations we find that firms which participate in these institutions exhibit significantly higher profits moreover firms that borrow from formal or informal sources and those that pay taxes are significantly more likely to stay in business but firms that received credit exhibit lower rates of income growth these results persist when firm characteristics that are arguably correlated with unobserved entrepreneurial ability are controlled for our findings suggest that the significant within country differences in firm productivity observed in developing economies are due in part to market and government failures that limit the ability of micro firms to reach their optimal sizes

unemployment insurance recall expectations and unemployment outcomes this paper empirically examines the importance of explicitly accounting for the layoff rehire process in the analysis of unemployment outcomes in the united states we find that the spells of individuals who initially expect to be recalled account for much more of the unemployment of unemployment insurance ui recipients than do spells actually ending in recall our results indicate that the recall and new job escape rates from unemployment have quite different time patterns and are often affected in opposite ways by explanatory variables we also find that the probability of leaving unemployment both through recalls and new job finding increases greatly around the time that ui benefits lapse over the past fifteen years many studies have empirically analyzed the determinants of individual unemployment spell durations in the united states much of this literature has used a job search framework in which the unemployed are viewed as permanently displaced workers who are unattached to jobs the possibility of recall to a former job a process not requiring search has been omitted from explicit consideration in the majority of these studies 2 an explicit treatment of the layoff rehire process is necessary for a proper understanding of the determinants of unemployment durations and of the impacts of unemployment policies in the united states for at least three reasons first temporary layoffs in which workers are often rehired by their original employers are a quantitatively quite important feature of the u s labor market 3 second expectations concerning the likelihood of recall are likely to affect the responses of employers and unemployed workers to labor market interventions such as reemployment bonuses and subsidies

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

legitimacy and the benefits of firm formalization entrepreneurs in many emerging economies start their firms informally without registering with the state we examine how informality at the time of founding affected the performance of 12 146 firms in 18 countries across sub saharan africa our findings indicate that entrepreneurs who registered their firms at founding enjoyed greater success in terms of sales and employment but these benefits varied widely across countries consistent with the idea that legitimation processes account for these benefits countries in which people trust their government more had larger advantages associated with being formal

an econometric analysis of reservation wages this paper describes an analysis of survey data on unemployed people who reported their asking wage and the wage they expected to earn we show that if agents behavior is described by the standard optimal job search model one can use these data to deduce structural parameters rather than estimate them and we report our deductions from two surveys 1 of british unemployed people

sme credit constraints in asia s rising economic star fresh empirical evidence from vietnam this study provides a fresh look at the sme sector s economic backbone vis a vis credit constraint dichotomy in vietnam asia s rising economic star the study uses data from the survey of manufactu

three or two stage stochastic market clearing algorithm as the power industry considers moving from a deterministic paradigm to a stochastic one to clear the day ahead market in systems with significant stochastic production the following question arises how should a stochastic clearing algorithm be formulated our analyses indicate that a three stage stochastic approach is clearly superior to a two stage one to show this we propose a model that includes three stages the first one represents the day ahead market the second stage the intraday market and the third one the real time operation the objective is to clear the day ahead market but with a prognosis of the future the intraday market and the real time operation to assess the impact of the intraday market on the day ahead outcomes we compare the results obtained from the proposed model with those of a simpler but more common two stage model which represents the day ahead market and the real time operation

does job search monitoring intensity affect unemployment evidence from northern ireland because unemployment benefit reforms typically package together a number of changes few existing evaluations have been able to isolate the effects of changes in job search monitoring intensity on benefit recipient stocks or flows those few studies that do so draw mixed conclusions this paper provides new estimates of monitoring impacts by exploiting plausibly exogenous periods where search monitoring has been temporarily withdrawn with the regime otherwise unchanged during a series of benefit office refurbishments in northern ireland as we would expect from search theory withdrawal of monitoring significantly increases the stock of unemployment benefit recipients via reduced outflows

is being flexible advantageous for demands this paper analyzes the impacts of flexible demands on day ahead market outcomes in a system with significant wind power production we use a two stage stochastic market clearing model where the first stage represents the day ahead market and the second stage represents the real time operation on one hand flexibility of demands is beneficial to the system as a whole since such flexibility reduces the operation cost but on the other hand shifts in demands from peak periods to off peak periods may influence prices in such a way that demands may not be willing to provide flexibility specifically we investigate the impacts of different degree of demand flexibility on day ahead prices a number of scenarios modeling the uncertainty associated with wind production at the operation stage and nonconvexities due to start up costs of generators and their minimum power outputs are taken into account

can informal firms hurt registered smes access to credit using firm level survey responses from 2009 to 2012 we examine whether competitors from the informal sector affect the credit constraints of registered smes in 86 countries worldwide we also investigate the role played by the quality of institutional environment in exacerbating or in alleviating such effect a weak quality of institutional environment strengthens inter linkages between the formal and the informal sectors increases the costs and decreases the benefits assumed by formal firms and reduces the costs attributed to informality moreover it also results in a large informal economy which influences perceptions about the substitutability between formal and informal goods and law evasion our findings indicate that registered smes facing competition from informal firms are more likely to be credit constrained than other formal smes that are not confronted with such competition this result is consistent with the parasite view and the entrepreneurial perspective of informality which assert that informal firms are capable of competing against registered smes and hurting the latter s profits further we find that such adverse impact manifests only in countries with weak rule of law and high degree of corruption and bureaucracy our results also show that registered micro and small firms are more likely to be affected by the presence of informal firm competitors than medium sized firms this is because the benefits of formality that include access to credit from financial institutions increase with firm size on the whole our findings suggest that governments must enhance their role in increasing access to credit to smaller firms and in providing incentives for informal firms to be integrated in the formal economy moreover in order to achieve inclusive growth our results highlight the importance of improving the business environment which affects all entrepreneurs

the internationalisation of public welfare policy with increasing globalisation of knowledge there are increased opportunities to learn from the experience of policy interventions elsewhere this paper presents evidence on the extent of international convergence in public policy with particular focus on labour welfare savings and retirement policy questions addressed in this framework include to what extent is policy diffusion or convergence a real and relevant phenomenon what role have economists played in the transfer of policy across national domains has policy transfer led to better public policy are there any practical limitations to policy convergence

does unemployment compensation affect unemployment duration abstract we use a flexible hazard rate model with unrestricted spell duration and calendar timeeffects to analyse a dataset including all norwegian unemployment spells during the1990 s the dataset provides a unique access to conditionally independent variation inunemployment compensation we find that a marginal increase in compensation re duces the escape rate from unemployment significantly irrespective of business cycleconditions and spell duration the escape rate rises sharply in the months just prior tobenefit exhaustion while men are more responsive than women with respect to mar ginal changes in compensation women are most responsive with respect to benefitexhaustion keywords unemployment spells business cycles unemployment compensation non parametric duration analysis jel classification c41 j64 the ragnar frisch centre for economic research oslo we wish to thank the re search council of norway for financial support and christian brinck harald goldstein costas meghir espen moen steinar strom rolf aaberge and three anonomyous referees for helpful comments cor respondence to knut roed the ragnar frisch centre for economic research gaustadalleen 21 0349oslo norway e mail knut roed frisch uio no

stochastic security constrained unit commitment this paper presents a stochastic model for the long term solution of security constrained unit commitment scuc the proposed approach could be used by vertically integrated utilities as well as the isos in electricity markets in this model random disturbances such as outages of generation units and transmission lines as well as load forecasting inaccuracies are modeled as scenario trees using the monte carlo simulation method for dual optimization coupling constraints among scenarios are relaxed and the optimization problem is decomposed into deterministic long term scuc subproblems for each deterministic long term scuc resource constraints represent fuel and emission constraints in the case of vertically integrated utilities and energy constraints in the case of electricity markets lagrangian relaxation is used to decompose subproblems with long term scuc into tractable short term mip based scuc subproblems without resource constraints accordingly penalty prices lagrangian multipliers are signals to coordinate the master problem and small scale subproblems computational requirements for solving scenario based optimization models depend on the number of scenarios in which the objective is to minimize the weighted average generation cost over the entire scenario tree in large scale applications the scenario reduction method is introduced for enhancing a tradeoff between calculation speed and accuracy of long term scuc solution numerical simulations indicate the effectiveness of the proposed approach for solving the stochastic security constrained unit commitment

the benefits of formalization evidence from vietnamese manufacturing smes summary based on unique panel data consisting of both formal and informal firms this paper uses a matched double difference approach to examine the relationship between legal status and firm level outcomes in micro small and medium manufacturing enterprises smes in vietnam controlling for determining factors and observable time variant factors that may simultaneously influence the decision to formalize and subsequent firm performance we find evidence that becoming officially registered leads to an increase in profits and investments and a decrease in the use of casual labor improved contract conditions for workers thus we conclude that formalizing is beneficial both to firms and the workers in these firms

expected value and chance constrained stochastic unit commitment ensuring wind power utilization this paper proposes an expected value and chance constrained stochastic optimization approach for the unit commitment problem with uncertain wind power output in the model the utilization of wind power can be adjusted by changing the utilization rate in the proposed expected value constraint meanwhile the chance constraint is used to restrict the probability of load imbalance then a sample average approximation saa method is used to transform the objective function the expected value constraint and the chance constraint into sample average reformulations furthermore a combined saa framework that considers both the expected value and the chance constraints is proposed to construct statistical upper and lower bounds for the optimization problem finally the performance of the proposed algorithm with different utilization rates and different risk levels is tested for a six bus system a revised ieee 118 bus system is also studied to show the scalability of the proposed model and algorithm

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

intensive coaching of new immigrants an evaluation based on random program assignment the purpose of this study is to evaluate whether intensive counseling and coaching by public employment service pes caseworkers improves the employment opportunities of new immigrants in sweden this is tested within the framework of introduction programs for new immigrants a trial introduction program was implemented from october 2006 to june 2008 within participating municipalities new immigrants were randomly assigned into treatment intensive coaching or control regular introduction programs the results indicate that there are significant treatment effects on employment probabilities as well as on participation in intermediate pes training programs

shadow economies size causes and consequences using various methods the size of the shadow economy in 76 developing transition and oecd countries is estimated average size varies from 12 percent of gdp for oecd countries to 23 percent for transition countries and 39 percent for developing countries increasing taxation and social security contributions combined with rising state regulations are driving forces for the increase of the shadow economy especially in oecd countries according to some findings corruption has a positive impact on the size of the shadow economy and a growing shadow economy has a negative effect on official gdp growth

informality and credit constraints evidence from sub saharan african mses abstractthe attributes of micro and small enterprises mses influencing access to credit in particular the level and role of firm informality are analysed in the article the puzzle is the push for mses to join the formal sector and the tug to avoid the extra burden it places on the firm it is important to know more clearly what forces are at work and the sources of the causal effects this study uses data from the world bank enterprise surveys for five low income countries lics in sub saharan africa the method is empirical and as we find informality to be endogenous to credit constraints an instrumental variable approach is estimated further to address the possibility of reverse causality an instrument for the informality variable is required not registered with inland revenue tax office is the chosen instrument variable the findings reveal that as the probability of a firm operating in the formal sector increases there is greater access to external credit the causality relationships are

is the threat of reemployment services more effective than the services themselves evidence from random assignment in the ui system we examine the effect of the worker profiling and reemployment services system this program profiles unemployment insurance ui claimants to determine their probability of benefit exhaustion and then provides mandatory employment and training services to claimants with high predicted probabilities using a unique experimental design we estimate that the program reduces mean weeks of ui benefit receipt by about 2 2 weeks reduces mean ui benefits received by about 143 ana increases subsequent earnings by over 1 050 most of the effect results from a sharp increase in early ui exits in the treatment group relative to the control group jel j650

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

multi area energy and reserve dispatch under wind uncertainty and equipment failures the cross border trading among electricity markets in an interconnected multi area system e g in central europe and the integration of renewable resources e g wind energy have remarkably increased in recent years to efficiently operate such system a proper coordination among different areas is required within this context a decentralized algorithm for market clearing is proposed in this paper to dispatch simultaneously energy and reserve under wind generation uncertainty and equipment failures the proposed technique does not require a central operator but just a moderate interchange of information among neighboring areas additionally the benefit of cross border trading is studied

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 value of intra day markets in power systems with high wind power penetration in this paper the value of intra day markets in managing wind power uncertainty in competitive electricity markets is analyzed a competitive electricity market model consisting of a day ahead market and a number of intra day markets is considered real time operation adjustment is also taken into account stochastic programming is used to model decision making under wind power uncertainty numerical simulations based on two test systems are presented

earnings unemployment and the allocation of time over time since an individual s labour market history can be described by a markov chain in state space it is possible to calculate the steady states it is natural to interpret the steady state proportion in unemployment for a group of identical workers as the natural rate of unemployment for this group i e it is the expected proportion that would be employed if the environment were to remain constant it is shown how the natural rate of unemployment is different for different groups the model is estimated using data from a large u s income maintenance experiment the predictions of the model with some exceptions bear up well to confrontation by data the empirical findings also accord well with existing evidence on cross section studies of labour supply we find that labour force participation rates implied by the estimated models are positively related to earnings for all age sex and race groups as expected we demonstrate that the elasticities of the unemployment rates for all groups with respect to expected wage rates are negative and large in absolute value in the case of adults while the role of the wage in allocation of time is not novel the existing neoclassical labour literature uses static labour supply models to interpret participation rate studies

measuring the equilibrium effects of unemployment benefits dispersion we analyze the impact of unemployment benefits and minimum wagesusing an equilibrium search model which allows for dispersion ofbenefits and productivity levels job to job transitions andstructural and frictional unemployment the estimation method usesreadily available aggregate data on marginal distributions ofunemployment durations as well as wages and benefit levels different causes of structural and frictional unemployment areinvestigated we investigate the efficiency of the imposition of asingle benefit level for all household types and the introductionof an earned income tax credit

credit constraints and determinants of the cost of capital in vietnamese manufacturing this paper examines the extent to which borrowing constraints restrict firm access to credit and identifies individual firm and loan characteristics which determine the cost of capital in vietnamese manufacturing using direct information from a vietnamese enterprise survey the paper shows that between 14 and 25 of the enterprises are credit constrained and these enterprises would increase their debt holdings by between 40 and 115 if borrowing constraints were relaxed moreover it emerges that informal credit markets play an important role for fast growing firms enterprises do not appear to have the necessary time to go through the many administrative difficulties in the formal credit system if they want to seize the day finally collateralized loans face larger interest rates explained by the significant influence of policy lending in vietnamese credit markets

on the short and medium term effects of formalisation panel evidence from vietnam abstractthis paper analyses the consequences of formalisation on the performance of informal firms using a panel dataset from vietnam we find that switching firms before switching have higher profit and value added compared to non switching firms suggesting heterogeneity becoming formal leads to an additional increase in switching firms profit and value added the benefits of formalisation materialise in the short term one year and persist in the longer term three or more years these benefits run through various channels such as better access to powered equipment or higher business association membership but not better access to credit

flexible parametric estimation of duration and competing risk models in this paper we specify and estimate a flexible parametric proportional hazards model the model specification is flexibly parametric in the sense that the baseline hazard is non parametric while the effect of the covariates takes a particular functional form we also add parametric heterogeneity to the underlying hazard model specification we specify a flexible parametric proportional competing risks model which permits unrestricted correlation among the risks unemployment duration data are then analysed using the flexible parametric duration and competing risks specifications we find an important effect arising from the exhaustion of unemployment insurance and significantly different hazards for the two types of risks new jobs and recalls

are there pre programme effects of active placement efforts evidence from a social experiment this note estimates pre programme effects of active placement programmes estimation is based on a social experiment conducted in three swedish counties in 2004 i find that placement programmes could substantially increase transitions both to jobs and other exits before programme start

land titling and rural transition in vietnam abstract we examine the impact of the 1993 land law of vietnam which gave households the power to exchange transfer lease inherit and mortgage their land use rights we use household surveys before and after the law was passed together with the considerable variation across provinces in the speed of implementation of the reform to identify the impact of the law we find that the additional land rights led to statistically significant increases in the share of total area devoted to long term crops and in labor devoted to nonfarm activities however these changes are not large in magnitude and appear to be driven mainly by the increased security of tenure provided by the law rather than by increased access to credit markets or greater land market participation

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

multi stage robust unit commitment considering wind and demand response uncertainties with the increasing penetration of wind power into the power grid maintaining system reliability has been a challenging issue for isos rtos due to the intermittent nature of wind power in addition to the traditional reserves provided by thermal hydro and gas generators demand response dr programs have gained much attention recently as another reserve resource to mitigate wind power output uncertainty however the price elastic demand curve is not exactly known in advance which provides another dimension of uncertainty to accommodate the combined uncertainties from wind power and dr we allow the wind power output to vary within a given interval with the price elastic demand curve also varying in this paper we develop a robust optimization approach to derive an optimal unit commitment decision for the reliability unit commitment runs by isos rtos with the objective of maximizing total social welfare under the joint worst case wind power output and demand response scenario the problem is formulated as a multi stage robust mixed integer programming problem an exact solution approach leveraging benders decomposition is developed to obtain the optimal robust unit commitment schedule for the problem additional variables are introduced to parameterize the conservatism of our model and avoid over protection finally we test the performance of the proposed approach using a case study based on the ieee 118 bus system the results verify that our proposed approach can accommodate both wind power and demand response uncertainties and demand response can help accommodate wind power output uncertainty by lowering the unit load cost

effects of unemployment insurance work search requirements the maryland experiment this paper describes findings from a 1994 experimental evaluation of alternative work search requirements in the unemployment insurance ui program requiring additional employer contacts or verification of contacts reduced ui receipt by one week and 115 per claimant because these additional requirements did not entail additional re employment services the ui spell reduction can be attributed to increased non monetary costs for remaining on ui a job search workshop requirement reduced ui receipt by half a week and 75 per claimant and additional results indicate that the effects were due to increased costs of continued ui receipt rather than to enhanced job search productivity these treatments did not affect employment or earnings implying that reduced ui duration led to more intensive job search rather than a reduction in the reservation wage in contrast elimination of the employer contact requirement increased ui receipt and post ui earnings suggesting that delayed exit from ui improved job matches he unemployment insurance ui program is designed to provide temporary income support to involuntarily unemployed individuals while they search for work although the ui program provides only temporary income support for the involuntarily unemployed it can reduce the incentive to seek employment because ui benefits reduce the cost of being unemployed resulting in an increase in the reservation wage and longer spells of unemployment to partially offset the negative impact ui benefits have onjob search state ui programs typically impose work search requirements for continued benefit receipt

a stochastic programming model for a day ahead electricity market with real time reserve shortage pricing we present a multi period stochastic mixed integer programming model for power generation scheduling in a day ahead electricity market the model considers various scenarios and integrates the idea of reserve shortage pricing in real time instead of including all the possible scenarios we parsimoniously select a certain number of scenarios to limit the size of the model as realistic size models are still intractable for exact methods we propose a heuristic solution methodology based on scenario rolling that is capable of finding good quality feasible solutions within reasonable computation time

unemployment insurance and unemployment spells this paper tests the effects of the level and length of unemployment insurance benefits on unemployment durations the paper particularly studies individual behavior during the weeks just prior to when benefits lapse higher unemployment insurance benefits are found to have a strong negative effect on the probability of leaving unemployment however the probability of leaving unemployment rises dramatically just prior to when benefits lapse individual data are used with accurate information of spell durations and the level and length of benefits the semiparametric estimation techniques used in the paper yield more plausible estimates than conventional approaches and provide useful diagnostics copyright 1990 by the econometric society

multi area unit scheduling and reserve allocation under wind power uncertainty this paper proposes a decentralized methodology to optimally schedule generating units while simultaneously determining the geographical allocation of the required reserve we consider an interconnected multi area power system with cross border trading in the presence of wind power uncertainty the multi area market clearing model is represented as a two stage stochastic programming model the proposed decentralized procedure relies on an augmented lagrangian algorithm that requires no central operator intervention but just moderate interchanges of information among neighboring regions the methodology proposed is illustrated using an example and a realistic case study

shedding light on the shadow economy a nighttime light approach abstractmeasuring the shadow economy is inherently difficult but critical for understanding economic development using census data on formal and informal sectors in cambodia we document that 96 6 per cent of non farm establishments do not formally register with the government and their sales accounted for 76 6 per cent of total sales in 2011 estimating their past sales from changes in nighttime light for 1993 2010 we find that both formal and informal firms increased their estimated sales the share of informal sales increased from 68 8 per cent in 1993 to 76 6 per cent in 2011 suggesting that the informal sector increased quantitatively in both absolute and relative terms over time

modeling approaches for computational cost reduction in stochastic unit commitment formulations although stochastic commitment policies provide robust and efficient solutions they have high computational costs this letter considers two modeling approaches for the reduction of their computational effort the relaxation of the integrality constraint of fast start units and the modeling of generation outages as load increments these approaches are shown to reduce the computational cost while maintaining the good properties of stochastic policies

regulation of entry labor market institutions and the informal sector abstract this paper develops a two sector matching model that incorporates the main features of latin american labor markets it has an innovation in its matching structure that makes it more consistent with some key stylized facts of the informal sector in these countries the model is numerically solved using brazilian data and several policy simulations are performed reducing formal sector s entry cost significantly reduces the size of the informal sector and improves overall labor market performance increasing enforcement significantly reduces informality but has strong adverse effects on unemployment and welfare thus the results indicate that the tradeoff between lower informal employment and higher unemployment rates is not present when one looks at policies that aim at reducing the costs of being formal as opposed to policies that simply increase the costs of being informal

taxing the informal economy the current state of knowledge and agendas for future research abstractthis paper reviews the literature on taxation of the informal economy taking stock of key debates and drawing attention to recent innovations conventionally the debate on whether to tax has frequently focused on the limited revenue potential high cost of collection and potentially adverse impact on small firms recent arguments have increasingly emphasised the more indirect benefits of informal taxation in relation to economic growth broader tax compliance and governance more research is needed we argue into the relevant costs and benefits for all including quasi voluntary compliance political and administrative incentives for reform and citizen state bargaining over taxation

returns to physical capital in ethiopia comparative analysis of formal and informal firms summary this paper investigates returns to capital in the formal and informal sectors in ethiopia using parametric and semi parametric regression techniques results show that there is a higher annual median return to capital in the informal sector 52 140 than the formal sector 15 21 however informal firms might benefit from working formally as their capital stock gets larger marginal returns in the informal sector increase with firm size access to reliable markets market uncertainty and owners labor supply on the other hand marginal returns to capital and overall profitability decrease with capital stock contrary to the poverty trap hypothesis

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

does formality improve micro firm performance evidence from the brazilian simples program abstract this paper exploits an extensive brazilian micro enterprise survey and the 1996 introduction of a business tax reduction and simplification scheme simples to examine three questions first do high tax rates and complex tax regulations really constitute a barrier to the formalization of micro firms second does formalization improve firm performance measured along several dimensions including revenues employment and capital stock third what are the channels through which this occurs we find that simples led to a significant increase in formality in several dimensions moreover newly created firms that opt for operating formally show higher levels of revenue and profits employ more workers and are more capital intensive only for those firms that have employees the channel through which this occurs is not access to credit or contracts with larger firms rather it appears that the lower cost of contracting labor leads to adopting production techniques that involve a permanent location and a larger paid labor force

courses or individual counselling does job search assistance work how does labour market policy affect welfare recipients and long term unemployed people we investigate whether job search assistance jsa helps disadvantaged individuals to find jobs and whether courses or individual counselling is more successful in reaching this goal to evaluate individual employment effects we apply a quasi experimental design and construct suitable comparison groups using propensity score matching methods we compare participants to nonparticipants as well as participants of both schemes directly our article benefits from access to rich administrative data from the german federal employment agency when comparing participants to nonparticipants results suggest that the individual jsa does not affect participants employment prospects at all and that the course jsa even decreased their employment chances at the same time differences in these effects can be ascribed to programme design differences and to differences in the groups of participants therefore we compare both progr

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

evaluating interconnector investments in the north european electricity system considering fluctuating wind power penetration with increasing amounts of power generation from intermittent sources like wind transmission planning has not only to account for the expected load curve but also for the stochasticity of volatile power infeeds moreover investments in power generation are no longer centrally planned in deregulated power markets but rather decided on competitive grounds by individual power companies this poses particular challenges when it comes to evaluating the benefits of increased interconnection capacities in large scale systems like the european transmission system within this article an approach is presented which allows assessing the benefits of interconnector investments in the presence of stochastic power infeed and endogenous power plant investments this model uses typical days and hours as well as recombining trees to represent both load and infeed fluctuations an application is presented covering 30 european countries and simultaneously optimizing generation investments and dispatch as well as utilization of transmission lines the model is used to evaluate the benefits of further line extensions between the european mainland and northern european countries we compute welfare gains and the distribution of these gains within a business as usual scenario up to 2030

improving incentives in unemployment insurance a review of recent research abstract this paper provides a review of the recent literature on how incentives in unemployment insurance can be improved we are particularly concerned with three instruments i e the duration of benefit payments or more generally the time sequencing of benefits monitoring in conjunction with sanctions and workfare our reading of the theoretical literature is that the case for imposing a penalty on less active job search is fairly solid a growing number of empirical studies including randomized experiments are in line with this conclusion