Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Danish Labour Market Policy: Is it worth it?

Contents:

Author Info

  • Westergaard-Nielsen, Niels

    () (Centre for Labour Market and Social Research, Aarhus School of Business)

Abstract

Denmark has been quite succesfull in reducing unemployment. At the same time the costs of creating activation and other schemes have been very high. OECD judges that total costs are about 5% of GDP, which is the highest amount among OECD-countries. This paper presents a comprehensive description of the recent Danish labour market policies. The paper goes through all the different programmes and shows that most of the measures introduced have increased the reservation wages of job seekers. The result was a sharp growth in the number of participants on a number of new programmes for the unemployed and for those seeking alternatives to work. The total number of people on some sort of passive or active scheme rose until late in the 90’s where admission to programmes was restricted and a strong economic upswing created new demand for labour. A final analysis of the probability that an unemployed person becomes employed, based on individual transition data, shows that the new labour market policies introduced after 1993 did not increase the probability that an unemployed person would get a job. However, there is a positive effect in 1997 and 1998 coinciding with the attempts to tighten admission to labour programmes.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.cls.dk/workingpapers/docfiles/90.pdf
Our checks indicate that this address may not be valid because: 500 Can't connect to www.cls.dk:80 (connect: timeout). If this is indeed the case, please notify (Helle Vinbaek Stenholt)
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research in its series CLS Working Papers with number 01-10.

as in new window
Length: 20 pages
Date of creation: 01 Nov 2001
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:hhs:aarcls:2001_010

Contact details of provider:
Postal: The Aarhus School of Business, Prismet, Silkeborgvej 2, DK 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
Phone: +45 89 48 66 88
Fax: + 45 86 15 01 88
Web page: http://www.cls.dk
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: Unemployment; Labour market policies; Denmark;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Yuying An, M., 1998. "Statistical Inference of a Bivariate Proportional Hazard Model with Grouped Data," Papers 98-12, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research, Danmark-.
  2. Bowlus, Audra J & Kiefer, Nicholas M & Neumann, George R, 1995. "Estimation of Equilibrium Wage Distributions with Heterogeneity," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(S), pages S119-31, Suppl. De.
  3. Bingley, P. & Eriksson, T. & Werwatz, A. & Westergard-Nielsen, N., 1999. "Beyond "Manucentrism" - Some Fresh Facts about Job and Worker Flows," Papers 99-09, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research, Danmark-.
  4. Jensen, P. & Nielsen, M.S. & Rosholm, M., 1999. "The Effects of Benefits, Incentives, and Sanctions on Youth Employment," Papers 99-05, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research, Danmark-.
  5. An, M.Y., 1996. "Log-Concave Probability Distributions : Theory and Statistical Testing," Papers 96-01, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research, Danmark-.
  6. Bontemps, C. & Robin, J.M. & van den Berg, G.J., 1998. "Equilibrium Search with Continuous Productivity Dispersion: Theory and Non-Parametric Estimation," Papers 98-07, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research, Danmark-.
  7. Kiefer, Nicholas M & Steel, Mark F J, 1998. "Bayesian Analysis of the Prototypal Search Model," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 16(2), pages 178-86, April.
  8. Christensen, B.J. & Kiefer, N.M., 1997. "Panel Data, Local Cuts, and Orthogeodesic Models," Papers 97-13, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research, Danmark-.
  9. Bingley, Paul & Gubta, Nabanita Datta & Pedersen, Peder J., 2001. "The Effects of Pension Programme Incentives on Retirement Behavior in Denmark," CLS Working Papers 01-8, University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research.
  10. Bowlus, A.J. & Kiefer, N.M. & Neumann, G.R., 1995. "Fitting Equilibrium Search Models to Labor Market Data," Working Papers 95-17, University of Iowa, Department of Economics.
  11. Pedersen, Peder J. & Smith, Nina, 2001. "International Migration and Migration policy in Denmark," CLS Working Papers 01-5, University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research.
  12. Gupta, N.D. & Oaxaca, R.L. & Smith, N., 1998. "Wage Dispersion, Public Sector Wages and the Stagnating Danish Gender Wage Gap," Papers 98-18, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research, Danmark-.
  13. An, M.Y. & Christensen, B.J. & Kiefer, N.M., 1998. "Approximate Distributions in Essentially Linear Models," Papers 98-08, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research, Danmark-.
  14. Coles, Melvyn G. & Treble, John G., 1996. "Calculating the price of worker reliability," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 169-188, September.
  15. Peder J. Pedersen & Nina Smith, 2000. "Trends in Danish Income Distribution," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 14(3), pages 523-546, 09.
  16. Christensen, Bent Jesper & Kiefer, Nicholas M., 1997. "Inference in non-linear panel models with partially missing observations The case of the equilibrium search model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 201-219, August.
  17. Peter Jensen & Helena Skyt Nielsen, 1997. "Child labour or school attendance? Evidence from Zambia," Journal of Population Economics, Springer, vol. 10(4), pages 407-424.
  18. Gubta, Nabanita Datta & Oaxaca, Ronald L. & Smith, Nina, 2002. "Swimming Upstream, Floating Downstream: Trends in the U.S. and Danish Gender Wage Gaps," CLS Working Papers 01-6, University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research.
  19. Nielsen-Westergaard, N. & Agerbo, E. & Eriksson, T. & Mortensen, P.B., 1999. "Mental Illness and Labour Market Outcomes: Employment and Earnings," Papers 99-04, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research, Danmark-.
  20. Belzil, Christian, 2000. "Job Creation and Job Destruction, Worker Reallocation, and Wages," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(2), pages 183-203, April.
  21. Belzil, Christian, 1996. "Relative Efficiencies and Comparative Advantages in Job Search," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 14(1), pages 154-73, January.
  22. H. Bunzel & B. J. Christensen & P. Jensen & N. M. Kiefer & L. Korsholm & L. Muus & G. R. Neumann & M. Rosholm, 2001. "Specification and Estimation of Equilibrium Search Models," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 4(1), pages 90-126, January.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Karanassou, Marika & Sala, Hector & Salvador, Pablo F., 2006. "The (Ir)relevance of the NRU for Policy Making: The Case of Denmark," IZA Discussion Papers 2397, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  2. Olivier Blanchard, 2006. "European unemployment: the evolution of facts and ideas," Economic Policy, CEPR & CES & MSH, vol. 21(45), pages 5-59, 01.
  3. Guillaume Blache, 2011. "Active labour market policies in Denmark : A comparative analysis of post-program effects," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 11071, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
  4. Guillaume Blache, 2011. "Active Labour Market Policies in Denmark : A Comparative Analysis of Post-Program Effects," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00654181, HAL.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:aarcls:2001_010

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Helle Vinbaek Stenholt).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.