ABSTRACT
This chapter deals primarily with Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) which mainly consist of educational and employment incentives offered to the unemployed. ALMPs aim at relieving or preventing the negative effects that spells of unemployment often bring about for the individual as well as for the labour market as a whole. The subject that researchers continually investigate is whether or not participation in ALMPs is fruitful. This chapter shows that it is difficult to make universal statements about this because the success of ALMPs seems to vary as a consequence of how they are designed, individual heterogeneity among participants, and methodological issues. Nevertheless, despite the difficulty in drawing conclusions, some general tendencies as regards the supply of ALMPs and subsequent micro level effects of ALMPs will be highlighted in this chapter.
