What Works? A Meta Analysis of Recent Active Labor Market Program Evaluations

By David Card, Jochen Kluve, Andrea Weber. Social Science Research Network, 2015

909 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a meta-analysis of impact estimates from over 200 recent econometric evaluations of active labor market programs from around the world. We classify estimates by program type and participant group, and distinguish between three different post-program time horizons. Using meta-analytic models for the effect size of a given estimate (for studies that model the probability of employment) and for the sign and significance of the estimate (for all the studies in our sample) we conclude that: (1) average impacts are close to zero in the short run, but become more positive 2-3 years after completion of the program; (2) the time profile of impacts varies by type of program, with larger gains for programs that emphasize human capital accumulation; (3) there is systematic heterogeneity across participant groups, with larger impacts for females and participants who enter from long term unemployment; (4) active labor market programs are more likely to show positive impacts in a recession.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/35aa5ccd7026d122e38adbbd6c7f38d077cb93c3

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Citations in the corpus

How Effective are Active Labor Market Policies in Developing Countries? A Critical Review of Recent Evidence (2017, methodology): “A complementary approach is meta-analysis, with Card et al. (2015) pooling together ALMP estimates from both developed and developing countries, including both randomized and quasi-experimental evaluations.”
Monopsony in Labor Markets: A Meta-Analysis (2020, methodology): “Card et al. (2018a) provide micro-foundations for the static monopsony model, assuming heterogeneity in worker preferences across different work environments.”
Productivity growth in Italy: a tale of a slow-motion change (2018, positive): “A more recent study by the same authors (Card et al. 2017) confirms and extends these results showing that ALMPs are particularly effective for women and long-term unemployed and if geared towards human capital accumulation.”
The Effects of Unemployment Insurance Benefits: New Evidence and Interpretation (2016, background): “…effect on unemployment duration on the job finding rates, as can arise if workers experience skill depreciation.24 There is a large literature analyzing the effect of a range of active labor market programs (ALMP) on employment outcomes of the unemployed in general (e.g. Card et al., 2010, 2015c).”
Active Labor Market Policies (2016, methodology): “The meta-analyses by Card et al. (2010, 2015), reviewing evaluations carried out since 1997, reveal a general tendency in favor of job seekers' return to employment.”
The effectiveness of active labour market policies: A meta-analysis (2019, neutral): “The data set used by Card et al. (2017) is similar to the one used in Card et al. (2010), but includes the studies citing Card et al. (2010), derived from Google Scholar.”
Interpreting OLS Estimands When Treatment Effects Are Heterogeneous: Smaller Groups Get Larger Weights (2018, neutral): “In a subset of 37 estimates from Card, Kluve, and Weber (2018), a survey of evaluations of active labor market programs, the mean proportion of treated units is 17.7%.1 Using the rule-of-thumb variants of my diagnostics, I establish that on average the difference between the OLS estimand and ATE is…”