How Effective Are Active Labor Market Policies in Developing Countries? : A Critical Review of Recent Evidence
Jobs are the number one policy concern of policy makers in many countries. The global financial crisis, rising demographic pressures, high unemployment rates, and concerns over automation all make it seem imperative that policy makers employ increa...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/256001490191438119/How-effective-are-active-labor-market-policies-in-developing-countries-a-critical-review-of-recent-evidence http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26352 |
| Summary: | Jobs are the number one policy concern
of policy makers in many countries. The global financial
crisis, rising demographic pressures, high unemployment
rates, and concerns over automation all make it seem
imperative that policy makers employ increasingly more
active labor market policies. This paper critically examines
recent evaluations of labor market policies that have
provided vocational training, wage subsidies, job search
assistance, and assistance moving to argue that many active
labor market policies are much less effective than
policymakers typically assume. Many of these evaluations
find no significant impacts on either employment or
earnings. One reason is that urban labor markets appear to
work reasonably well in many cases, with fewer market
failures than is often thought. As a result, there is less
of a role for many traditional active labor market policies
than is common practice. The review then discusses examples
of job creation policies that do seem to offer promise, and
concludes with lessons for impact evaluation and policy is
this area. |
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