Paul T. Decker

International Trade and Worker Displacement: Evaluation of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program

The Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program offers unemployment compensation and re-employment adjustment services to workers who lose their jobs due to increased import competition. In 1981 and again in 1988, the program rules were changed to shift the emphasis from compensation to training. This paper examines the pre-layoff characteristics and post-layoff labor market experience of two nationally representative samples of TAA program participants, one of which participated in the program just before the 1988 amendments and the other just after. The authors find that the TAA program was well targeted during the time period studied: it served workers who were permanently displaced from their jobs and who experienced significant earnings losses due to their layoff. They find no evidence, however, tha training had a substantial positive impact on earnings of TAA trainees, at least in the first three years after their initial unemployment insurance claim.

The Impact of Reemployment Bonuses on Insured Unemployment in the New Jersey and Illinois Reemployment Bonus Experiments

Separate social experiments conducted in New Jersey and Illinois tested the effect of offering Unemployment Insurance (UI) claimants a cash bonus for rapid reemployment. The Illinois bonus was constant over time, while the New Jersey bonus declined over time, so that the bonus received was greater the earlier that reemployment occurred. This paper compares the effects of the bonus offers on the rate at which claimants exited UI. The New Jersey and Illinois bonus offers generated similar increases in the UI exit rate during the period in which claimants could qualify for the bonus. However, the declining New Jersey bonus had little impact on long-term claimants who exhausted their UI benefits. In contrast, the constant Illinois bonus had a substantial impact on long-term claimants, thereby reducing the rate at which claimants exhausted their UI benefits. This finding at least partly explains why the Illinois bonus had a larger impact on UI receipt than the New Jersey bonus.

Effective employment services for persons with mental retardation

Evidence from the Social Security Administrations Transitional Employment Training Demonstration indicates that the overall performance of supported employment programs can be improved through program models that emphasize flexible and persistent services.