Measures of Active Labor Market Policy - such as training, wage subsidies, public employment measures, and job search assistance - are widely used in European countries to combat unemployment. This study provides novel insight on this important policy issue by discussing the role of the European Commission's Employment Strategy, reviewing the experiences made in European states, and giving the first ever quantitative assessment of the existing cross-country evidence.

Measures of Active Labor Market Policy - such as training, wage subsidies, public employment measures, and job search assistance - are widely used in European countries to combat unemployment. Little, however, is known about what each country can learn from experiences in other countries. This study provides novel insight on this important policy issue by discussing the role of the European Commission's Employment Strategy, reviewing the experiences made in European states, and giving the first ever quantitative assessment of the existing cross-country evidence, answering the question "what labor market program works for what target group under what (economic and institutional) circumstances?." Using an innovative meta-analytical approach, the authors find that rather than contextual factors such as labor market institutions or the business cycle, it is almost exclusively the program type that matters for program effectiveness: While direct employment programs in the public sector appear detrimental, wage subsidies and "Services and Sanctions" can be effective in increasing participants' employment probability.

David Card and Alan B. Krueger have already made national news with their pathbreaking research on the minimum wage. Here they present a powerful new challenge to the conventional view that higher minimum wages reduce jobs for low-wage workers. In a work that has important implications for public policy as well as for the direction of economic research, the authors put standard economic theory to the test, using data from a series of recent episodes, including the 1992 increase in New Jersey's minimum wage, the 1988 rise in California's minimum wage, and the 1990-91 increases in the federal minimum wage. In each case they present a battery of evidence showing that increases in the minimum wage lead to increases in pay, but no loss in jobs. A distinctive feature of Card and Krueger's research is the use of empirical methods borrowed from the natural sciences, including comparisons between the "treatment" and "control" groups formed when the minimum wage rises for some workers but not for others. In addition, the authors critically reexamine the previous literature on the minimum wage and find that it, too, lacks support for the claim that a higher minimum wage cuts jobs. Finally, the effects of the minimum wage on family earnings, poverty outcomes, and the stock market valuation of low-wage employers are documented. Overall, this book calls into question the standard model of the labor market that has dominated economists' thinking on the minimum wage. In addition, it will shift the terms of the debate on the minimum wage in Washington and in state legislatures throughout the country. With a new preface discussing new data, Myth and Measurement continues to shift the terms of the debate on the minimum wage.

What factors affect the ways individuals participate in labor markets?

"New Developments and Research on Labor Markets" (volume 4B) proposes answers to this and other questions on important topics of public policy. Leading labor economists demonstrate how better data and advanced experiments help them apply economic theory, yielding sharper analyses and conclusions. The combinations of these improved empirical findings with new models enable the authors of these chapters to reveal how labor economists are developing new and innovative ways to measure key parameters and test important hypotheses.

Concentrates on empirical research in specific labor markets, including those defined by age, gender, and race
Reveals how questions and answers about these markets have changed and how models measure them
Documents how conceptual models and empirical work explain important practical issues

A guide to the continually evolving field of labour economics. This volume concentrates on the following topics: interactions between the labour market and the macroeconomy; and policy issues within the labour market.

Modern labor economics has continued to grow and develop since the first volumes of this Handbook were published. The subject matter of labor economics continues to have at its core an attempt to systematically find empirical analyses that are consistent with a systematic and parsimonious theoretical understanding of the diverse phenomenon that make up the labor market. As before, many of these analyses are provocative and controversial because they are so directly relevant to both public policy and private decision making. In many ways the modern development in the field of labor economics continues to set the standards for the best work in applied economics.
This volume of the Handbook has a notable representation of authors - and topics of importance - from throughout the world.

What new tools and models are enriching labor economics?

"Developments in Research Methods and their Application" (volume 4A) summarizes recent advances in the ways economists study wages, employment, and labor markets. Mixing conceptual models and empirical work, contributors cover subjects as diverse as field and laboratory experiments, program evaluation, and behavioral models. The combinations of these improved empirical findings with new models reveal how labor economists are developing new and innovative ways to measure key parameters and test important hypotheses.
Investigates recent advances in methods and models used in labor economics Demonstrates what these new tools and techniques can accomplish Documents how conceptual models and empirical work explain important practical issues

"Most economists believe that minimum wages invariably reduce employment, but are they right? In this compelling analysis of the U.S. minimum wage, Card and Kreuger show that recent increases in the minimum wage had no adverse effect on employment. This pathbreaking book suggests that economists know less about what the invisible hand is up to than they let on."--Richard Freeman, London School of Economics and Harvard University

""Myth and Measurement"is an extraordinarily important book. It will rank with seminal works in labor economics, including Gary Becker's "Human Capital," Jacob Mincer's "Schooling, Earnings, and Experience," Richard Freeman and James Medoff's "What Do Unions Do?," and Edmund Phelp's (ed.) "Microeconomic Foundations of Employment and Inflation Theory," The book will interest everyone involved in the minimum wage debates, and it will cause economists to question seriously the models they use and how they do empirical research."--Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Cornell University

"The analysis of minimum wage by Card and Krueger is both comprehensive and provocative. It challenges the received wisdom and is certain to be a major influence on all future work on the topic."--James J. Heckman, University of Chicago

""Myth and Measurement" is an extraordinarily important book. It will rank with seminal works in labor economics, including Gary Becker's "Human Capital," Jacob Miner's "Schooling and Earnings," Richard Freeman and James Medoff's "What Unions Do?," and Edmund Phelp's (ed.), "Microeconomic Foundations of Employment and Inflation Theory," The book will interest everyone involved in the minimum wage debates, and it will cause economists to question seriously themodels they use and how they do empirical research."--Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Cornell University

"In Card and Krueger's hands, the collage becomes a dangerous weapon; the idea that employment has fallen significantly in the wake of minimum wage increases is attacked with both new evidence and a careful look at previous studies."--Charles Brown, University of Michigan

"The most professional work ever done on this highly controversial subject."--Richard Layard, London School of Economics

David Card and Alan B. Krueger have made substantial contributions to the field of Labor Economics. Their influential work focuses on policy-relevant issues and spans vast and important topics, including: unemployment, minimum wage, migration, measurement error, unions, wage differentials among various groups in the U.S., labor demand, social insurance, and technological change. Card and Krueger have also been extremely influential in econometrics methodology; they were at the forefront of employing an "experimental" approach in their research design and implementation. Both of these IZA prize winners have made significant methodological contributions on instrumental variable estimation, measurement error, regression discontinuity methods, and the use of "natural" experiments. This book provides an overview of their most important work and is divided two main parts: the first section focuses on school quality and the differences in wages across groups in the U.S.; the second part concentrates on the effect of changes in the minimum wage on employment and wage setting. In section introductions, Card and Krueger offer their insight into these two areas and discuss the historical context for their research.

The rapid rise in the proportion of foreign-born residents in the U.S. since the mid-1960s is one of the most important demographic events of the past fifty years. The increase in immigration, especially among the less-skilled and less-educated, has prompted fears that the newcomers may have depressed the wages and employment of the native-born, burdened state and local budgets, and slowed the U.S. economy as a whole. Would the poverty rate be lower in the absence of immigration? How does the undocumented status of an increasing segment of the foreign-born population impact wages in the U.S.? In Immigration, Poverty and Socioeconomic Inequality, noted labor economists David Card and Steven Raphael and an interdisciplinary team of scholars provide a comprehensive assessment of the costs and benefits of the latest era of immigration to the U.S. As the debate over immigration reform reemerges on the national agenda, Immigration, Poverty and Socioeconomic Inequality provides a timely and authoritative review of the immigrant experience in the United States. With its wealth of data and intriguing hypotheses, the volume is an essential addition to the field of immigration studies.

This volume, the first in a new series by the National Bureau of Economic Research that compares labour markets in different countries, examines social and labour market policies in Canada and the United States during the 1980s. It shows that subtle differences in unemployment compensation, unionization, immigration policies, and income maintenance programmes have significantly affected economic outcomes in the two countries. Examples of these differences include the following: Canada's social safety net, more generous than the American one, produced markedly lower poverty rates in the 1980s. Canada saw a smaller increase in earnings inequality than the United States did, in part because of the strength of Canadian unions, which have twice the participation that US unions do. Canada's unemployment figures were much higher than those in the United States, not because the Canadian economy failed to create jobs but because a higher percentage of non-working time was reported as unemployment. These disparities have become noteworthy as policy makers cite the experiences of the other country to support or oppose particular initiatives.