Evaluating Labour Market Policy

This pper reviews major approaches and findings on the evaluation of the impact of different labour market institutions but pays particular attention to active labour market policies that play an important role in the portfolio of economic policy makers in many OECD countries for several decades. Rigorous evaluation in this field has grown rapidly since the early 2000s. Describing concrete evaluation studies the focus was on the important role of good data, methodological problems and discuss the impact on participants as well as possible effects on non-participants. It further describes how to investigate whether a programme also achieved positive net effects at a macroeconomic level. Finally, a closer look on policy implications and interactions with other institutional features.