Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Early Meetings and Activation

We analyse three Danish experiments with combinations of early and intensive active labour market policy. We find that frequent individual meetings between newly unemployed workers and their caseworkers have substantial (and significant) effects on employment rates in both the medium and long run. Group meetings or an “activation wall” show positive but insignificant effects. Based on information on the costs of running the experiments, active labour programmes, and public transfer payments, we analyse the impact on government budgets and we show that individual meetings improved budgets with up to 4,500 euros per unemployed worker. We also look at the impact for subgroups.