Activation and active labour market policies in OECD countries: stylised facts and evidence on their effectiveness

By John P. Martin. 2015

198 citations recorded by the source corpus.

AbstractActivation policies aimed at getting working-age people off benefits and into work have become a buzzword in labour market policies. Yet they are defined and implemented differently across OECD countries, and their success rates vary too. The Great Recession has posed a severe stress test for these policies, with some commentators arguing that they are at best “fair weather” policies. This paper sheds light on these issues mainly via the lens of recent OECD research. It presents the stylised facts on how OECD countries have responded to the Great Recession in terms of ramping up their spending on active labour market policies (ALMPs), a key component in any activation strategy. It then reviews the macroeconomic evidence on the impact of ALMPs on employment and unemployment rates. This is followed by a review of the key lessons from recent OECD country reviews of activation policies. It concludes with a discussion of crucial unanswered questions about activation. JEL codes: J01, J08, J68

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Health Professions, Political Science and International Relations

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ed9a4c220e926ab2ff5f59a9ecdc52a663a9c1b4

Citations in the corpus

• The effectiveness of active labour market policies: A meta-analysis (2019, unknown): “The basic idea behind this “activation” concept is to reduce structural unemployment by steering the unemployed to find employment and/or to promote wage growth (Martin 2015).”