Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP6558
Authors: Stefanie Behncke; Markus Frlich; Michael Lechner
Abstract: In many countries, caseworkers in a public employment office have the dual roles of counselling and monitoring unemployed persons. These roles often conflict with each other leading to important case-worker heterogeneity: Some consider providing services to their clients and satisfying their demands as their primary task. Others may however pursue their strategies even against the will of the unemployed person. They may assign job assignments and labour market programmes without consent of the unemployed person. Based on a very detailed linked jobseeker-caseworker dataset, we investigate the effects of caseworkers' cooperativeness on the employment probabilities of their clients. Modified statistical matching methods reveal that caseworkers who place less emphasis on a cooperative and harmonic relationship with their clients increase their employment chances in the short and medium term.
Keywords: Public Employment Services; Statistical Matching Methods; Unemployment
JEL Codes: C31; J68
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| caseworker cooperativeness (I38) | employment probabilities (J68) |
| less cooperative caseworker (J54) | higher reemployment probabilities (J68) |
| less cooperative caseworker (J54) | increased job search efforts (J68) |
| caseworker cooperativeness (I38) | job stability (J63) |