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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Main Author:	McKenzie, David
Format:	Working Paper
Language:	English en_US
Published:	World Bank, Washington, DC 2017
Subjects:	LABOR MARKET LABOR POLICY LABOR REGULATIONS VOCATIONAL TRAINING WAGE SUBSIDIES JOB SEARCH ASSISTANCE
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

id	okr-10986-26352
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-263522021-06-08T14:42:48Z How Effective Are Active Labor Market Policies in Developing Countries? : A Critical Review of Recent Evidence McKenzie, David LABOR MARKET LABOR POLICY LABOR REGULATIONS VOCATIONAL TRAINING WAGE SUBSIDIES JOB SEARCH ASSISTANCE 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. 2017-04-13T14:55:45Z 2017-04-13T14:55:45Z 2017-03 Working Paper 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 English en_US Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8011 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	English en_US
topic	LABOR MARKET LABOR POLICY LABOR REGULATIONS VOCATIONAL TRAINING WAGE SUBSIDIES JOB SEARCH ASSISTANCE
spellingShingle	LABOR MARKET LABOR POLICY LABOR REGULATIONS VOCATIONAL TRAINING WAGE SUBSIDIES JOB SEARCH ASSISTANCE McKenzie, David How Effective Are Active Labor Market Policies in Developing Countries? : A Critical Review of Recent Evidence
relation	Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8011
description	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.
format	Working Paper
author	McKenzie, David
author_facet	McKenzie, David
author_sort	McKenzie, David
title	How Effective Are Active Labor Market Policies in Developing Countries? : A Critical Review of Recent Evidence
title_short	How Effective Are Active Labor Market Policies in Developing Countries? : A Critical Review of Recent Evidence
title_full	How Effective Are Active Labor Market Policies in Developing Countries? : A Critical Review of Recent Evidence
title_fullStr	How Effective Are Active Labor Market Policies in Developing Countries? : A Critical Review of Recent Evidence
title_full_unstemmed	How Effective Are Active Labor Market Policies in Developing Countries? : A Critical Review of Recent Evidence
title_sort	how effective are active labor market policies in developing countries? : a critical review of recent evidence
publisher	World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate	2017
url	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
_version_	1764461768966406144

How Effective Are Active Labor Market Policies in Developing Countries? : A Critical Review of Recent Evidence

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