IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ecj/econjl/v120y2010i548pf452-f477.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Active Labour Market Policy Evaluations: A Meta-Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • David Card
  • Jochen Kluve
  • Andrea Weber

Abstract

This article presents a meta-analysis of recent microeconometric evaluations of active labour market policies. We categorise 199 programme impacts from 97 studies conducted between 1995 and 2007. Job search assistance programmes yield relatively favourable programme impacts, whereas public sector employment programmes are less effective. Training programmes are associated with positive medium-term impacts, although in the short term they often appear ineffective. We also find that the outcome variable used to measure programme impact matters, but neither the publication status of a study nor the use of a randomised design is related to the sign or significance of the programme estimate. Copyright © 2010 TheAuthor(s). The Economic Journal © 2010 Royal Economic Society.

Suggested Citation

  • David Card & Jochen Kluve & Andrea Weber, 2010. "Active Labour Market Policy Evaluations: A Meta-Analysis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(548), pages 452-477, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecj:econjl:v:120:y:2010:i:548:p:f452-f477
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lechner, Michael & Wunsch, Conny, 2006. "Active Labour Market Policy in East Germany: Waiting for the Economy to Take Off," CEPR Discussion Papers 5924, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Michael Gerfin & Michael Lechner, 2002. "A Microeconometric Evaluation of the Active Labour Market Policy in Switzerland," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(482), pages 854-893, October.
    3. Annette Bergemann & Gerard J. Van Den Berg, 2008. "Active Labor Market Policy Effects for Women in Europe - A Survey," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 91-92, pages 385-408.
    4. James Heckman & Hidehiko Ichimura & Jeffrey Smith & Petra Todd, 1998. "Characterizing Selection Bias Using Experimental Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(5), pages 1017-1098, September.
    5. Ashenfelter, Orley & Card, David, 1985. "Using the Longitudinal Structure of Earnings to Estimate the Effect of Training Programs," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 67(4), pages 648-660, November.
    6. Jespersen, Svend T. & Munch, Jakob R. & Skipper, Lars, 2008. "Costs and benefits of Danish active labour market programmes," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 859-884, October.
    7. LaLonde, Robert J, 1986. "Evaluating the Econometric Evaluations of Training Programs with Experimental Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 604-620, September.
    8. David Card & Raj Chetty & Andrea Weber, 2007. "The Spike at Benefit Exhaustion: Leaving the Unemployment System or Starting a New Job?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 113-118, May.
    9. Card, David & Krueger, Alan B, 1995. "Time-Series Minimum-Wage Studies: A Meta-analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(2), pages 238-243, May.
    10. Jochen Kluve & Christoph M. Schmidt, 2002. "Can training and employment subsidies combat European unemployment? [‘The non-parametric identification of treatment effects in duration models’]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 17(35), pages 409-448.
    11. Heckman, James J. & Lalonde, Robert J. & Smith, Jeffrey A., 1999. "The economics and econometrics of active labor market programs," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 31, pages 1865-2097, Elsevier.
    12. Guido W. Imbens & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2009. "Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 5-86, March.
    13. V. Joseph Hotz & Guido W. Imbens & Jacob A. Klerman, 2006. "Evaluating the Differential Effects of Alternative Welfare-to-Work Training Components: A Reanalysis of the California GAIN Program," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(3), pages 521-566, July.
    14. Biewen, Martin & Fitzenberger, Bernd & Osikominu, Aderonke & Waller, Marie, 2007. "Which Program for Whom? Evidence on the Comparative Effectiveness of Public Sponsored Training Programs in Germany," ZEW Discussion Papers 07-042, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    15. Ashenfelter, Orley, 1987. "The case for evaluating training programs with randomized trials," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 333-338, August.
    16. Ashenfelter, Orley C, 1978. "Estimating the Effect of Training Programs on Earnings," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 60(1), pages 47-57, February.
    17. Kluve, Jochen, 2010. "The effectiveness of European active labor market programs," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(6), pages 904-918, December.
    18. Barbara Sianesi, 2004. "An Evaluation of the Swedish System of Active Labor Market Programs in the 1990s," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 133-155, February.
    19. Richardson, Katarina & van den Berg, Gerard J., 2002. "The effect of vocational employment training on the individual transition rate from unemployment to work," Working Paper Series 2002:8, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    20. James J. Heckman & Hidehiko Ichimura & Petra Todd, 1998. "Matching As An Econometric Evaluation Estimator," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 65(2), pages 261-294.
    21. Editors The, 2007. "From the Editors," Basic Income Studies, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-5, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David Card & Jochen Kluve & Andrea Weber, 2009. "Active Labor Market Policy Evaluations – A Meta-analysis," Ruhr Economic Papers 0086, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen.
    2. repec:zbw:rwirep:0086 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. David Card & Jochen Kluve & Andrea Weber, 2018. "What Works? A Meta Analysis of Recent Active Labor Market Program Evaluations," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(3), pages 894-931.
    4. Gueorgui Kambourov & Iourii Manovskii & Miana Plesca, 2020. "Occupational mobility and the returns to training," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(1), pages 174-211, February.
    5. Lechner, Michael & Wunsch, Conny, 2013. "Sensitivity of matching-based program evaluations to the availability of control variables," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 111-121.
    6. Martin Biewen & Bernd Fitzenberger & Aderonke Osikominu & Marie Paul, 2014. "The Effectiveness of Public-Sponsored Training Revisited: The Importance of Data and Methodological Choices," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(4), pages 837-897.
    7. Rainer Eppel & Helmut Mahringer, 2012. "Do wage subsidies work in boosting economic inclusion? Evidence on e," EcoMod2012 4065, EcoMod.
    8. Cho,Yoonyoung & Kalomba, Davie & Mobarak,Ahmed Mushfiq & Orozco Olvera,Victor Hugo & Cho,Yoonyoung & Kalomba, Davie & Mobarak,Ahmed Mushfiq & Orozco Olvera,Victor Hugo, 2013. "Gender differences in the effects of vocational training : constraints on women and drop-out behavior," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6545, The World Bank.
    9. Caliendo, Marco & Mahlstedt, Robert & Mitnik, Oscar A., 2017. "Unobservable, but unimportant? The relevance of usually unobserved variables for the evaluation of labor market policies," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 14-25.
    10. Guido W. Imbens & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2009. "Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 5-86, March.
    11. Peter R. Mueser & Kenneth R. Troske & Alexey Gorislavsky, 2007. "Using State Administrative Data to Measure Program Performance," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(4), pages 761-783, November.
    12. Jones A.M & Rice N, 2009. "Econometric Evaluation of Health Policies," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 09/09, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    13. Daniel Goller & Tamara Harrer & Michael Lechner & Joachim Wolff, 2021. "Active labour market policies for the long-term unemployed: New evidence from causal machine learning," Papers 2106.10141, arXiv.org, revised May 2023.
    14. Biewen, Martin & Fitzenberger, Bernd & Osikominu, Aderonke & Waller, Marie, 2007. "Which Program for Whom? Evidence on the Comparative Effectiveness of Public Sponsored Training Programs in Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 2885, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. McGuinness, Seamus & O'Connell, Philip J. & Kelly, Elish & Walsh, John R., 2011. "Activation in Ireland: An Evaluation of the National Employment Action Plan," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number RS20.
    16. Cho, Yoonyoung. & Kalomba, Davie. & Mobarak, Ahmed Mushfiq. & Orozco, Víctor., 2015. "Differences in the effects of vocational training on men and women : constraints on women and drop-out behaviour," ILO Working Papers 994874103402676, International Labour Organization.
    17. Richard Blundell & Monica Costa Dias, 2009. "Alternative Approaches to Evaluation in Empirical Microeconomics," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 44(3).
    18. Kluve, Jochen & Lehmann, Hartmut & Schmidt, Christoph M., 2008. "Disentangling Treatment Effects of Active Labor Market Policies: The Role of Labor Force Status Sequences," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(6), pages 1270-1295, December.
    19. Muller, Paul & van der Klaauw, Bas & Heyma, Arjan, 2017. "Comparing Econometric Methods to Empirically Evaluate Job-Search Assistance," IZA Discussion Papers 10531, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. David Card & Pablo Ibarrarán & Ferdinando Regalia & David Rosas-Shady & Yuri Soares, 2011. "The Labor Market Impacts of Youth Training in the Dominican Republic," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(2), pages 267-300.
    21. Carlos A. Flores & Oscar A. Mitnik, 2009. "Evaluating Nonexperimental Estimators for Multiple Treatments: Evidence from Experimental Data," Working Papers 2010-10, University of Miami, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs
    • J08 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics Policies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecj:econjl:v:120:y:2010:i:548:p:f452-f477. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing or Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/resssea.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.