Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/234237 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Citation: 
[Journal:] Journal for Labour Market Research [ISSN:] 2510-5027 [Volume:] 54 [Issue:] 1 [Publisher:] Springer [Place:] Heidelberg [Year:] 2020 [Pages:] 1-14
Publisher: 
Springer, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
In a Public Employment Service reform implemented in 2013, sixty Finnish municipalities experienced an involuntary employment office closure. The Government's objective was to replace traditional face-to-face employment counselling with modern online counselling and simultaneously generate savings in outlays. The reform created natural experiment circumstances that allowed us to estimate the aggregate causal effects of face-to-face counselling and advice. We estimated the effects of the reform on the unemployment rate and the average unemployment duration using municipality-level panel data and various panel data estimators. We found that while the reform had a barely discernible effect on municipal unemployment rates, it increased average unemployment durations by 2-3 weeks. Hence, face-to-face counselling and online counselling are not perfect substitutes in decreasing the length of unemployment spells. Consequently, the fiscal costs of the reform outweigh the fiscal benefits by a large margin.
Subjects: 
Counselling
Reform
Unemployment
Microdata
JEL: 
J64
H76
C23
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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