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Carrots, No Stick, No Driver: The Employment Impact of Job Search Assistance in a Regime with Minimal Monitoring and Sanctions

Author

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  • Seamus McGuinness

    (Economic & Social Research Institute, Trinity College Dublin)

  • Philip J. O’Connell

    (UCD Geary Institute, University College Dublin)

  • Elish Kelly

    (Economic & Social Research Institute, Trinity College Dublin)

Abstract

This paper uses a high quality longitudinal dataset to assess the impact of an active labour market intervention consisting of referral for interview plus Job Search Assistance (JSA) with the public employment service in Ireland during a period when both job search monitoring and sanctions were virtually non-existent. We find that, relative to a control group with no intervention, unemployed individuals that received the interview letter and participated in JSA were 15 per cent less likely to have exited to employment prior to 12 months. The results hold when tested against the influences of both sample selection and unobserved heterogeneity bias. The negative treatment impact is attributed to individuals lowering their job search intensity on learning, through the JSA activation interview, of the lax nature of the activation process. The research, which is unusual in the international literature in allowing rrthe assessment of the impact of job search assistance in the virtual absence of monitoring and sanctions, highlights the need for effective monitoring and sanctions as integral components of labour market activation programmes.

Suggested Citation

  • Seamus McGuinness & Philip J. O’Connell & Elish Kelly, 2013. "Carrots, No Stick, No Driver: The Employment Impact of Job Search Assistance in a Regime with Minimal Monitoring and Sanctions," Working Papers 201308, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
  • Handle: RePEc:ucd:wpaper:201308
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    Cited by:

    1. Pignatti Clemente & Van Belle Eva, 2021. "Better together: Active and passive labor market policies in developed and developing economies," IZA Journal of Development and Migration, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 12(1), pages 1-27, January.
    2. McGuinness, Seamus & Kelly, Elish, 2020. "Managing mass unemployment flows during the Covid-19 health pandemic," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number SUSTAT95, August.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Unemployment; Labour Market Policy; Job Search;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

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