TY - RPRT AU - Ashenfelter, Orley AU - Ashmore, David AU - Deschenes, Olivier TI - Do Unemployment Insurance Recipients Actively Seek Work? Evidence From Randomized Trials in Four U.S. States PY - 2000/Mar/ PB - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) CY - Bonn T2 - IZA Discussion Paper IS - 128 UR - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp128 AB - In this paper we report the results of the only field test of which we are aware that uses randomized trials to measure whether stricter enforcement and verification of work search behavior alone decreases unemployment claims and benefits paid in the U.S. unemployment insurance (UI) program. These experiments, which we implemented in four sites in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Tennessee, were designed to explicitly test claims based on nonexperimental data, summarized in Burgess and Kingston (1987), that a prime cause of overpayments is the failure of claimants to actively seek work. Our results provide no support for the view that the failure to actively search for work has been a cause of overpayments in the UI system. KW - work-search requirement KW - overpayment KW - Social experiment ER -