Labour market programmes and labour market outcomes: a study of the Swedish active labour market interventions

This paper assesses the impact of Swedish welfare-to-work programmes on labour market performance including wages, labour market status, unemployment duration and future welfare-to-work participation. We develop a structural dynamic model of labour supply which incorporates detailed institutional features of these policies and allows for selection on observables and unobservables. We estimate the model from a rich administrative panel data set and show that training programmes - which account for a large proportion of programmes - have little effect on future outcomes, whereas job experience programmes have a beneficial effect.