@phdthesis{Mahlstedt2017,
  author    = {Mahlstedt, Robert},
  title     = {Essays on job search behavior and labor market policies},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-397081},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {252},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {Persistently high unemployment rates are a major threat to the social cohesion in many societies. To moderate the consequences of unemployment industrialized countries spend substantial shares of their GDP on labor market policies, while in recent years there has been a shift from passive measures, such as transfer payments, towards more activating elements which aim to promote the reintegration into the labor market. Although, there exists a wide range of evidence about the effects of traditional active labor market policies (ALMP) on participants' subsequent labor market outcomes, a deeper understanding of the impact of these programs on the job search behavior and the interplay with long-term labor market outcomes is necessary. This allows policy makers to improve the design of labor market policies and the allocation of unemployed workers into specific programs. Moreover, previous studies have shown that many traditional ALMP programs, like public employment or training schemes, do not achieve the desired results. This underlines the importance of understanding the effect mechanisms, but also the need to develop innovative programs that are more effective. This thesis extends the existing literature with respect to several dimensions. First, it analyzes the impact of job seekers' beliefs about upcoming ALMPs programs on the effectiveness of realized treatments later during the unemployment spell. This provides important insights with respect to the job search process and relates potential anticipation effects (on the job seekers behavior before entering a program) to the vast literature evaluating the impact of participating in an ALMP program on subsequent outcomes. The empirical results show that training programs are more effective if the participants expect participation ex ante, while expected treatment effects are unrelated to the actual labor market outcomes of participants. A subsequent analysis of the effect mechanisms shows that job seekers who expect to participate also receive more information by their caseworker and show a higher willingness to adjust their search behavior in association with an upcoming ALMP program. The findings suggest that the effectiveness of training programs can be improved by providing more detailed information about the possibility of a future treatment early during the unemployment spell. Second, the thesis investigates the effects of a relatively new class of programs that aim to improve the geographical mobility of unemployed workers with respect to the job search behavior, the subsequent job finding prospects and the returns to labor market mobility. To estimate the causal impact of these programs, it is exploited that local employment agencies have a degree of autonomy when deciding about the regional-specific policy mix. The findings show that the policy style of the employment agency indeed affects the job search behavior of unemployed workers. Job seekers who are assigned to agencies with higher preferences for mobility programs increase their search radius without affecting the total number of job applications. This shift of the search effort to distant regions leads to a higher probability to find a regular job and higher wages. Moreover, it is shown that participants in one of the subsidy programs who move to geographically distant region a earn significantly higher wages, end up in more stable jobs and face a higher long-run employment probability compared to non-participants. Third, the thesis offers an empirical assessment of the unconfoundedness assumption with respect to the relevance of variables that are usually unobserved in studies evaluating ALMP programs. A unique dataset that combines administrative records and survey data allows us to observe detailed information on typical covariates, as well as usually unobserved variables including personality traits, attitudes, expectations, intergenerational information, as well as indicators about social networks and labor market flexibility. The findings show that, although our set of usually unobserved variables indeed has a significant effect on the selection into ALMP programs, the overall impact when estimating treatment effects is rather small. Finally, the thesis also examines the importance of gender differences in reservation wages that allows assessing the importance of special ALMP programs targeting women. In particular, when including reservation wages in a wage decomposition exercise, the gender gap in realized wages becomes small and statistically insignificant. The strong connection between gender differences in reservation wages and realized wages raises the question how these differences in reservation wages are set in the first place. Since traditional covariates cannot sufficiently explain the gender gap in reservation wages, we perform subgroup analysis to better understand what the driving forces behind this gender gap are.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Schmidl2014,
  author    = {Schmidl, Ricarda},
  title     = {Empirical essays on job search behavior, active labor market policies, and propensity score balancing methods},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-71145},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {In Chapter 1 of the dissertation, the role of social networks is analyzed as an important determinant in the search behavior of the unemployed. Based on the hypothesis that the unemployed generate information on vacancies through their social network, search theory predicts that individuals with large social networks should experience an increased productivity of informal search, and reduce their search in formal channels. Due to the higher productivity of search, unemployed with a larger network are also expected to have a higher reservation wage than unemployed with a small network. The model-theoretic predictions are tested and confirmed empirically. It is found that the search behavior of unemployed is significantly affected by the presence of social contacts, with larger networks implying a stronger substitution away from formal search channels towards informal channels. The substitution is particularly pronounced for passive formal search methods, i.e., search methods that generate rather non-specific types of job offer information at low relative cost. We also find small but significant positive effects of an increase of the network size on the reservation wage. These results have important implications on the analysis of the job search monitoring or counseling measures that are usually targeted at formal search only. Chapter 2 of the dissertation addresses the labor market effects of vacancy information during the early stages of unemployment. The outcomes considered are the speed of exit from unemployment, the effects on the quality of employment and the short-and medium-term effects on active labor market program (ALMP) participation. It is found that vacancy information significantly increases the speed of entry into employment; at the same time the probability to participate in ALMP is significantly reduced. Whereas the long-term reduction in the ALMP arises in consequence of the earlier exit from unemployment, we also observe a short-run decrease for some labor market groups which suggest that caseworker use high and low intensity activation measures interchangeably which is clearly questionable from an efficiency point of view. For unemployed who find a job through vacancy information we observe a small negative effect on the weekly number of hours worked. In Chapter 3, the long-term effects of participation in ALMP are assessed for unemployed youth under 25 years of age. Complementary to the analysis in Chapter 2, the effects of participation in time- and cost-intensive measures of active labor market policies are examined. In particular we study the effects of job creation schemes, wage subsidies, short-and long-term training measures and measures to promote the participation in vocational training. The outcome variables of interest are the probability to be in regular employment, and participation in further education during the 60 months following program entry. The analysis shows that all programs, except job creation schemes have positive and long-term effects on the employment probability of youth. In the short-run only short-term training measures generate positive effects, as long-term training programs and wage subsidies exhibit significant locking-in'' effects. Measures to promote vocational training are found to increase the probability of attending education and training significantly, whereas all other programs have either no or a negative effect on training participation. Effect heterogeneity with respect to the pre-treatment level education shows that young people with higher pre-treatment educational levels benefit more from participation most programs. However, for longer-term wage subsidies we also find strong positive effects for young people with low initial education levels. The relative benefit of training measures is higher in West than in East Germany. In the evaluation studies of Chapters 2 and 3 semi-parametric balancing methods of Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Inverse Probability Weighting (IPW) are used to eliminate the effects of counfounding factors that influence both the treatment participation as well as the outcome variable of interest, and to establish a causal relation between program participation and outcome differences. While PSM and IPW are intuitive and methodologically attractive as they do not require parametric assumptions, the practical implementation may become quite challenging due to their sensitivity to various data features. Given the importance of these methods in the evaluation literature, and the vast number of recent methodological contributions in this field, Chapter 4 aims to reduce the knowledge gap between the methodological and applied literature by summarizing new findings of the empirical and statistical literature and practical guidelines for future applied research. In contrast to previous publications this study does not only focus on the estimation of causal effects, but stresses that the balancing challenge can and should be discussed independent of question of causal identification of treatment effects on most empirical applications. Following a brief outline of the practical implementation steps required for PSM and IPW, these steps are presented in detail chronologically, outlining practical advice for each step. Subsequently, the topics of effect estimation, inference, sensitivity analysis and the combination with parametric estimation methods are discussed. Finally, new extensions of the methodology and avenues for future research are presented.},
  language  = {en}
}