This paper examines whether the chances of job placements improve if unemployed persons are counselled by caseworkers who belong to the same social group, defined by gender, age, education, and nationality. Based on an unusually informative dataset, which links Swiss unemployed to their caseworkers, we find positive employment effects of about 4 percentage points if caseworker and unemployed belong to the same social group. Coincidence in a single characteristic, e.g. same gender of caseworker and unemployed, does not lead to detectable effects on employment. These results, obtained by statistical matching methods, are confirmed by several robustness checks.

This paper presents a dynamic North-South general-equilibrium model where per capita incomes shape demand patterns across regions. Innovation takes place in a rich North while firms in a poor South imitate products manufactured in North. Allowing a role for per capita incomes in determining demand delivers a complete international product cycle as described by Vernon (1966), where the different stages of the product cycle are not only determined by supply-side factors but also by the distribution of income between North and South. We analyze how changes in the gap between North and South due to changes in Southern labor productivity, population size in South and inequality across regions affect the international product cycle. In line with presented stylized facts, we predict a negative correlation between adoption time and per capita incomes.

Präsentation an der European Evaluation Society Annual Conference, Lausanne, 14.10.2000#### not available in German Link zum zugehörigen Paper

In this study the effects of various types of rehabilitation programmes on labour market out-comes are estimated. A main feature of this study is that it jointly evaluates multiple treat-ments by nonparametric matching estimators. The study is based on a large sample of per-sons in western Sweden who are long-term sick and could participate in rehabilitation pro-grammes. Our results suggest that work-place training is superior to the other rehabilitation programmes with respect to labour market outcomes, but compared to non-participation no positive effects are found. (doi:10.1002/jae.757) Download appendix: (pdf, 147 kb)

Präsentation am Jahreskongress der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Statistik und Volkswirtschaft, Solothurn, 23.3.2000#### not available in German Link zum zugehörigen Paper

not available in German This note tests whether the extraordinary rise in Spanish unemployment in the 1980s can be traced back to rigidities in the earnings structure in the face of relative net demand shocks against the unskilled (this claim is also known as the ‘Krugman hypothesis'). I can establish that youth joblessness is key to the Spanish unemployment problem, but sampling procedures in the data set make it impossible to track the youth unemployment problem across time in a satisfactory way. Even though high youth unemployment is consistent with the Krugman hypothesis, substantial skill upgrading of the Spanish labour force in the 1980s explains why the low education groups did not experience an increase in relative unemployment.

Hahn [Hahn, J. (1998). On the role of the propensity score in efficient semiparametric estimation of average treatment effects. Econometrica 66:315-331] derived the semiparametric efficiency bounds for estimating the average treatment effect (ATE) and the average treatment effect on the treated (ATET). The variance of ATET depends on whether the propensity score is known or unknown. Hahn attributes this to "dimension reduction." In this paper, an alternative explanation is given: Knowledge of the propensity score improves upon the estimation of the distribution of the confounding variables.