The influence of the active labor market policy measures on unemployment in OECD countries

The main aim of the paper is to evaluate the impact of the individual active labor market policy measures on the unemployment rate in OECD countries. Based on fixed effects panel regression approach and using yearly data for 29 OECD countries we find negative and significant relationship between spending on public employment services and administration, training, and start-up incentives and unemployment rate. Additionally, the results show that if we take into account differences in labor market flexibility and income per capita among studied OECD countries the influence of individual ALMP measures decreases while moving from countries with lower labor market flexibility to countries with higher labor market flexibility and/or from countries with lower income to countries with higher income.