To address the issue of persistent unemployment, the UK Government implemented a conditional welfare scheme. Prompted by Mantouvalou's argument that the scheme forces people into exploitative work, this paper addresses the ‘pressing’ question of whether the scheme is compatible with the prohibition on ‘forced or compulsory labour’ under Article 4(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights. It is argued that, whether the scheme imposes the menace of a penalty, is involuntary, seriously exploitative or a normal civic obligation, ultimately depends on different understandings of the demands of distributive justice. Given the politically contested nature of those demands, Article 4(2) is a poor weapon to use when challenging the UK's conditional welfare scheme.

The Disability Support Pension (DSP) is the major Australian government financial benefit program for people of working age with medical conditions and disabilities that restrict work capacity. Between 2012 and 2018 a series of policy reforms sought to restrict the growth in DSP payments and encourage more people with some work capacity to seek employment. We characterise changes in three markers of access to disability financial support over the reform period (1) DSP recipient rates (2) DSP grant (approval) rates and (3) the rate of unemployment benefit receipt in people with impaired work capacity. Results demonstrate a significant reduction in DSP receipt and grant rates, and significant increase in the rate of unemployment benefit receipt in working-age Australians with work disabling medical conditions and disability. These changes were not distributed uniformly. People whose primary medical condition was a musculoskeletal or circulatory system disorder demonstrated greater declines in DSP receipt and grant rates, while there was a more rapid increase in unemployment benefit receipt among people with primary mental health conditions. Some trend changes occur in periods during which new disability assessment and pension eligibility policies were introduced, though our ability to attribute changes to specific policy changes is limited.

Evaluation studies of active labour market policy show different activation measures generate contradictory results. In the present study, we argue that these contradictory results are due to the fact that the outcomes of activation measures depend on other institutions. The outcome measure in this study is the long-term unemployment rate. Two labour market institutions are of special interest in this context: namely, employment protection and unemployment benefits. Both institutions, depending on their design, may either increase or decrease the effectiveness of active labour market policies in lowering long-term unemployment. Based on an analysis of macro-level data on 20 countries over a period of 16 years, our results show that employment protection strictness and unemployment benefit generosity interact with the way in which active labour market policies relate to long-term unemployment. Our results also indicate that, depending on the measure used, active labour market policies fit either in a flexible or in a coordinated labour market. This suggests that active labour market policies can adhere to both institutional logics, which are encapsulated in different types of measures.

Over the last decades, governments in the advanced democracies have put greater pressure on the unemployed to seek and accept employment. This development has been pointed out in much prior research, yet relatively little is known about the exact changes that have been introduced. This paper fills this gap. It draws on a novel time-series cross-section dataset on the strictness of unemployment benefit conditions and sanctions in 21 democracies between 1980 and 2012, and shows in which aspects these rules have become stricter – and in which not. The paper confirms that there has been a general trend toward tighter conditions and sanctions, but adds some important qualifications: Many rules and provisions have also been adapted in response to the emergence of new social risks and there is also a noticeable trend toward more clearly defined and precise rules. Based on these findings, new causal hypotheses are suggested.

To explain the high and persistent unemployment rate in the United States during and after the Great Recession, this effort develops and estimates a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with search and matching frictions and shocks to unemployment benefits and matching efficiency. It finds that unemployment benefits play an important role in the cyclical movement of unemployment through their effects on labor demand, a channel overlooked in previous studies. From the second half of 2008 to 2011, extended unemployment benefits may have increased the overall unemployment rate by one percentage point. In contrast, matching efficiency changes had less effect on the cyclical movement of unemployment for the same period, but significantly slowed down the recovery after 2012.

En utilisant un modèle d'appariement avec différenciation des qualifications, nous étudions l'effet du salaire minimum sur le fonctionnement du marché du travail. L'introduction d'un salaire minimum semble améliorer l'adéquation des travailleurs aux emplois en rendant les “mauvaises” associations impossibles. Trois résultats principaux sont ainsi établis. Premièrement, le salaire minimum peut augmenter l'efficacité du marché du travail. Ensuite, dès que le salaire minimum est suffisamment élevé pour contraindre effectivement la formation des salaires, les allocations chômage perdent tout effet positif sur la productivité et deviennent invariablement inefficientes (en excluant les situations de sur-emploi). Finalement, des simulations numériques montrent que l'introduction d'un salaire minimum peut être un meilleur instrument de régulation du marché du travail que l'augmentation des allocations chômage.