TY  - JOUR
A1  - Caliendo, Marco
A1  - Künn, Steffen
A1  - Mahlstedt, Robert
T1  - The return to labor market mobility
BT  - an evaluation of relocation assistance for the unemployed
JF  - Journal of Public Economics
N2  - In many European countries, labor markets are characterized by high regional disparities in terms of unemployment rates on the one hand and low geographical mobility among the unemployed on the other hand. In order to counteract the geographical mismatch of workers, the German active labor market policy offers a subsidy covering moving costs to incentivize unemployed job seekers to search/accept jobs in distant regions. Based on administrative data, this study provides the first empirical evidence on the impact of this subsidy on participants' prospective labor market outcomes. We use an instrumental variable approach to take endogenous selection based on observed and unobserved characteristics into account when estimating causal treatment effects. We find that unemployed job seekers who participate in the subsidy program and move to a distant region receive higher wages and find more stable jobs compared to non-participants. We show that the positive effects are (to a large extent) the consequence of a better job match due to the increased search radius of participants.
KW  - Evaluation
KW  - Active labor market policy
KW  - Labor market mobility
KW  - Instrumental variable approach
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.02.008
SN  - 0047-2727
VL  - 148
SP  - 136
EP  - 151
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Lausanne
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Caliendo, Marco
A1  - Mahlstedt, Robert
A1  - Mitnik, Oscar A.
T1  - Unobservable, but unimportant? The relevance of usually unobserved variables for the evaluation of labor market policies
JF  - Labour economics : an international journal
KW  - Matching
KW  - Unconfoundedness
KW  - Unobservables
KW  - Selection bias
KW  - Personality traits
KW  - Active labor market policy
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2017.02.001
SN  - 0927-5371
SN  - 1879-1034
VL  - 46
SP  - 14
EP  - 25
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -