Does Job Search Monitoring Intensity Affect Unemployment? Evidence from Northern Ireland

Abstract

Because unemployment benefit reforms typically package together a number of changes, few existing evaluations have been able to isolate the effects of changes in job search monitoring intensity on benefit recipient stocks or flows. Those few studies that do so draw mixed conclusions. This paper provides new estimates of monitoring impacts by exploiting plausibly exogenous periods where search monitoring has been temporarily withdrawn - with the regime otherwise unchanged - during a series of benefit office refurbishments in Northern Ireland. As we would expect from search theory, withdrawal of monitoring significantly increases the stock of unemployment benefit recipients via reduced outflows. Copyright (c) The London School of Economics and Political Science 2008.

Healing or Deepening the Scars of Unemployment? The Impact of Activation Policies on Unemployed Workers

“…Neither Gorter and Kalb (1996), Ashenfelter et al (2005), Van den Berg and Van der Klaauw (2006), nor Manning (2009) report significant results. In contrast, Dolton and O’Neill (2002), Graversen and Van Ours (2008), McVicar (2010), Hägglund (2011) as well as Cockx and Dejemeppe (2012) do find positive effects. Moreover, the effects tend to be weaker than those for sanctions.…”

“…Moreover, the effects tend to be weaker than those for sanctions. For example, the estimates of Graversen and Van Ours (2008: 2031) translate into a relative effect on the job finding rate of 30%, whereas McVicar (2010: 311) reports that the abandonment of counselling and monitoring has led to a 15% increase of registered unemployment. Unlike sanctions, none of the aforementioned studies has considered the impact on job quality.…”

Examining the Effects of Zero‐Dollar Unemployment Payment Sanctions*

“…Even in systems such as Australia’s, where there is no systematic increase in monitoring following sanctions, it seems reasonable that welfare agency staff may expect previously sanctioned jobseekers to be more non‐compliant in future and therefore monitor these jobseekers more intensively. Additional monitoring has been shown to increase jobseekers’ exit from unemployment benefits, even without any changes to requirements of sanction arrangements (e.g., McVicar, 2010; Borland & Tseng, 2007).…”

The impact of monitoring and sanctioning on unemployment exit and job-finding rates

“…It also finds no significant effect on the probability of reentering unemployment within a year. Another study finds a small reduction in inflows to unemployment resulting from suspension of search monitoring, perhaps caused indirectly by reduced outflows from unemployment and the resulting removal of highrisk individuals from the at-risk population [4].…”

“…This literature has focused on the effects of monitoring on benefit recipients, mostly ignoring potential monitoring effects on inflows to unemployment, with partial exceptions [3], [4].…”