Mandatory integration agreements for unemployed job seekers: a randomized controlled field experiment in Germany

Original source

Gerard J. van den Berg; Barbara Hofmann; Gesine Stephan; Arne Uhlendorff

Mandatory integration agreements for unemployed job seekers: a randomized controlled field experiment in Germany (2021)

working paper

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Advance Notification Anticipation Effect

"Individuals who are not informed in advance adjust their behavior more abruptly upon the signing of the IA, as reflected in a larger increase of the exit rate to work than what is observed among those who are informed in advance."

Auxiliary Program Decoupling

"None of the coefficients is significantly different from zero. This suggests that our main findings are not driven by differences in the access to ALMP, the receipt of vacancy referrals or the number of meetings with the caseworkers... IAs thus appear to operate independently of other policy measures."

Caseworker Execution Heterogeneity

"Among disadvantaged clients, we find strong evidence of effect heterogeneity according to an F test (p-value is 0.041)... results motivate further research to identify whether caseworkers can increase the re-employment effect of early IAs among disadvantaged clients by adopting the work practice used by the most effective caseworkers."

Employability-Driven Effect Heterogeneity

"On average, among those with low employability, being assigned to an early IA increases the probability of re-employment within a year by about 8 percentage points, from 45% to 53% (so the relative increase is 18%)."

Pre-Experimental Out-of-Sample Predictive Profiling

"We do not use in-sample observations to quantify the prediction model in order to avoid overfitting and the related risk of biased treatment effects (Abadie et al. 2018)."

Pseudo-Contractual Monitoring Ritual

"Signing the IA, with its apparently symmetric design with rights and obligations and with its space for two signatures, may be viewed as a sort of ritual that may increase the commitment on both sides... it is more accurate to view the IA as a refresher on obligations and as a reminder of monitoring and potential punishments."

Statutory Benefit-Cutoff Sanction Mechanism

"If you do not perform your duties on necessary search efforts (not in time or not completely), a cutoff-period of benefits will take place. The duration of a cut-off period due to inadequate search efforts amounts to two weeks."

Subsidized Employment Pathway Acceleration

"There are some slightly different coefficients and significance levels which may reflect a slightly earlier flow into subsidized work among those who receive an early IA. However, the overriding pattern of results is not strongly affected by this."