Job-search monitoring and unemployment duration: evidence from a randomized control trial

The impact of the administration of unemployment benefits on time spent unemployed is a neglected issue in discussion of incentive effects in Central and Eastern Europe. The authors use Labour Force Survey data, administrative registers and inspection of benefit office practices to show that there is good reason to investigate this issue in Hungary. They report results from a field experiment designed to show the impact of tightening the administration of benefits, in which benefit claimants were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. Treatment has quite a large effect on the benefit receiving durations of women aged 30 and over, while no effect was found for younger women or for men.