This paper reviews some of the most popular policy evaluation methods in empirical microeconomics: social experiments, natural experiments, matching, instrumental variables, discontinuity design, and control functions. It discusses identification of traditionally used average parameters and more complex distributional parameters. The adequacy,…

This article examines the employment and child care responses of families participating in 10 experimental welfare reform programs conducted in the United States between 1989 and 2002. For the programs analyzed, child care use increases by about the same amount as the increase in employment. Most of the increased child care comprises informal care…

This report identifies what policies can be effective in eliminating hard-core unemployment in Dublin and preventing its re-emergence in a new generation. An executive summary precedes the main body of the report. Chapter 1 describes the background of economic boom against which the persistence of long-term unemployment appears paradoxical;…

California's Employment Training Panel Program (ETP), the largest state-funded customized training program for incumbent workers in the nation, has had a positive impact on the economy of California, and its success has policy implications for other state programs. The impact of ETP on trainees includes the following: they are more attached to the…

As welfare-to-work reforms increase women's labor market attachment, the lives of their young children are likely to change. This note draws on a random-assignment experiment in Connecticut to ask whether mothers' rising employment levels and program participation are associated with changes in young children's early learning and cognitive growth.…

The antipoverty initiatives of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations were essentially continued and given increased funding during the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations. The Reagan and Bush administrations marked the regression of many employment, training, and welfare programs. Employment and training issues were given high priority…