ارزیابی سیاست های بازار کار در حالت تعادل: برخی از درس های از جستجوی کار و مدل تطابق

We analyze the consequences of counseling provided to job seekers in a standard job search and matching model. It turns out that neglecting equilibrium effects induced by counseling can lead to wrong conclusions. In particular, counseling can increase steady state unemployment although counseled job seekers exit unemployment at a higher rate than the non-counseled. Dynamic analysis shows that permanent and transitory policies can have effects of opposite sign on unemployment.

Most policy evaluations are based on comparing the behavior of participants and non participants in the policy. But the differences in outcome between the treatment group and the control group do estimate the policy mean impact only if the outcomes of the control group are not influenced by the policy, the so-called ‘no-interference’ (Rubin, 1978) or ‘stable unit treatment value’ (Angrist et al., 1996) assumption. However, the policy may have equilibrium effects that extend to the untreated as well. For instance, Heckman and Smith, 1998a and Heckman et al., 1998b strikingly illustrate this point in the context of education policies. This issue, which is discussed in a broader perspective in the survey of Meghir (2006), is particularly relevant to the evaluation of labor supply based policies (such as increasing incentives or monitoring the unemployed). First, they generally aim at increasing the overall number of filled jobs, which depends on the interactions between aggregate labor supply and labor demand. Second, these policies may induce displacement effects: treated persons may crowd out the untreated because they compete for the same jobs. Although they have long been recognized, these questions have received limited attention to date. Davidson and Woodbury, 1993 and Calmfors, 1994 are early contributions. More recently, Lise et al. (2005) study the equilibrium effects of the Self-Sufficient Project incentive program in Canada. They calibrate an equilibrium model of the labor market so that, when used in partial equilibrium, the model matches the effect of the program estimated by direct comparison of treated and untreated. When equilibrium effects are simulated, the impact of the Self-Sufficient Project is far lower. In contrast, Albrecht et al. (2009) find, using a calibrated model, equilibrium effects of a Swedish training program to be stronger than implied by direct comparison. Using a job search and matching model with skilled and unskilled workers, Van der Linden (2005) shows that micro and equilibrium evaluations are likely to differ widely when job search effort and wages are endogenous. When wages are bargained over, raising the effectiveness of or the access to counselling programs pushes wages upwards and leads to lower search effort among nonparticipants. Induced effects can outweigh positive micro effects on low-skilled employment when the response of wages is taken into account. The equilibrium effects have also been analyzed in empirical evaluations that do not rely on structural models. For instance, the contribution of Blundell et al. (2004) evaluates the New Deal for Young People in the U.K. This program was piloted in certain areas before it was rolled out nationwide. Moreover, the program has age specific eligibility rules. Blundell, Costa Dias, Meghir and Van Reenen use these area and age based eligibility criteria that vary across individuals of identical unemployment durations to identify the program effects. They find that either equilibrium wage and displacement effects are not very strong or they broadly cancel each other out. The aim of our paper is to analyze the impact of counseling in the standard matching model of the labor market (Pissarides, 2000). In our specification, counseled unemployed have a constant comparative advantage in the job search.1 Using this simple model allows us to analyze the consequences of counseling in a dynamic set-up, whereas previous studies are limited to the comparison of steady states. More precisely, we shed some light on three important issues: (i) What is the true impact of the policy when equilibrium effects are taken into account? The model shows that the true impact of counseling can be very different from what can be concluded when equilibrium effects are neglected even when the treatment group is small. For instance, we find that counseling can increase unemployment when a small proportion of job seekers benefit from counseling, although counseling improves the efficiency of job search. Equilibrium effects rely on the adjustment of wages. The impact of policies on wages has been analyzed in some papers devoted to equilibrium effects of several labor market policies and education policies, in particular since the seminal contribution of Heckman and Smith, 1998a and Heckman et al., 1998b.2 Our model allows us to analyze precisely the reaction of wages to counseling, as in the paper of Van der Linden (2005).3 (ii) What is the impact of the generalization of the policy to a large treatment group? The model shows that there is no simple answer. In particular, the relation between the impact of the policy on unemployment and the size of the treatment group is not necessarily monotonic. Strikingly, in our framework, unemployment increases with the size of the treatment group when a small share of job seekers are treated but diminishes with the size of the treatment group when a sufficiently large share of job seekers are counseled. (iii) What is the dynamic impact of counseling? Many experiments made to evaluate labor market policies are transitory. Typically, a group of job seekers is selected to benefit from counseling (the treatment group) and the control group will never benefit from counseling. The comparison between the outcomes yields the evaluation of the impact of counseling. Our model allows us to stress that the consequences of permanent and transitory policies can be very different. The difference comes from the reaction of non-counseled job seekers. When the policy is transitory, non-counseled workers do not expect to benefit from counseling in the future. However, when the policy is permanent, the expectation to benefit from counseling in the future induces the non-counseled workers to raise their reservation wage. In our framework, this phenomenon implies that permanent counseling increases unemployment when a small share of job seekers are counseled whereas counseling always decreases unemployment when it is transitory. Accordingly, it can be misleading to conclude that a truly successful transitory policy will remain successful when it becomes permanent. The paper is organized as follows. The model is presented in Section 2. Section 3 is devoted to the impact of counseling in steady state. Transitory dynamics are analyzed in Section 4. Section 5 provides concluding comments.

Our paper stresses that it is worth accounting for equilibrium effects in the effort to provide a proper evaluation of counseling policies. Neglecting such effects could lead to the conclusion that counseling reduces steady state unemployment although its true effect could be the opposite. A striking result obtained in the paper is that this type of error can arise when the size of the treatment group is small. It also turns out that it can be wrong to conclude that a truly successful transitory policy remains successful when it becomes permanent. This result is important to the extent that many policy evaluations rely on temporary experiments of policies. Typically, a policy is evaluated during a transitory period. Then, it is often assumed that this evaluation provides relevant information to evaluate the effect of the policy that will be implemented permanently. Our analysis shows that this is not always the case.