Comparing econometric methods to empirically evaluate activation programs for job seekers
利用荷兰失业保险管理数据，比较断点回归、动态匹配和事件时序模型三种方法评估同一激活项目，发现短期效应一致但大小不同，长期效应均为零。
Summary We test whether different identification strategies give similar results when evaluating activation programs. Budgetary problems at the Dutch unemployment insurance (UI) administration in March 2010 caused a sharp drop in the availability of these programs. Using administrative data provided by the UI administration, we evaluate the effect of the program (1) exploiting the policy discontinuity as a quasi‐experiment, (2) using dynamic matching assuming conditional independence, and (3) applying the timing‐of‐events model. All three strategies use the same data to consider the same program in the same setting, and show that the program reduces job finding directly after enrollment. However, the magnitude of the estimated drop in job finding differs between the three estimation methods. In the longer run, all three methods show a zero effect on employment.