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IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

Abstract: We estimate the effects of conditioning benefits on program participation among older long-term unemployed workers. We exploit a Swedish reform which reduced UI duration from 90 to 60 weeks for a group of older unemployed workers in a setting where workers who exhausted their benefits received unchanged transfers if they agreed to participate in a work practice program. Our results show that job finding increased as a result of the shorter duration of passive benefits. The time profile of the job-finding effects suggests that the effects are due to deterrence effects during the program-entry phase. We find no evidence of wage reductions, suggesting that the increased job-finding rate was driven by increased search intensity rather than lower reservation wages.

Keywords: Activation; program evaluation; UI; duration

JEL-codes: J26; J64; J65; J68

34 pages, April 11, 2012

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Published as

Helge Bennmarker, Oskar Nordström Skans and Ulrika Vikman, (2013), 'Workfare for the old and long-term unemployed', Labour Economics, vol 25, pages 25-34

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