Empirical Evaluation of Broader Job Search Requirements for Unemployed Workers

Bas van der Klaauw and Heike Vethaak
Additional contact information
Heike Vethaak: Leiden University

No 22-083/V, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: This paper analyses data from a large-scale field experiment where unemployed workers were randomly assigned to an additional caseworker meeting with the purpose to impose a broader job search strategy. We find that the meeting significantly increases job finding and is cost effective. However, caseworkers differ substantially in the rate at which they impose broader job search. We exploit this heterogeneity in caseworker stringency and the random assignment of unemployed workers to caseworkers within local offices to evaluate the broader search requirement. Our results show that imposing the broader search requirements reduces job finding. We argue that restricting the job search opportunities forces unemployed workers to search sub-optimally which negatively affects labor market outcomes.

Keywords: Unemployment; broader job search; caseworker stringency; caseworker meetings; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 J22 J64 J65 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-11-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hrm and nep-lab
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://papers.tinbergen.nl/22083.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Empirical Evaluation of Broader Job Search Requirements for Unemployed Workers (2022)
Working Paper: Empirical Evaluation of Broader Job Search Requirements for Unemployed Workers (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tin:wpaper:20220083

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 ().