Self-Regulation Training and Job Search Effort: A Natural Field Experiment within an Active Labor Market Program

Recent evidence suggests that self-regulation plays an important role for the job finding success of unemployed persons. We conduct a randomized natural field experiment embedded in an established labor market reactivation program to examine the effect of a self-regulation training on job search effort—focusing on the effort put into preparing job applicationdocuments—of long-term unemployed participants. We find a positive treatment effect on effort operationalized as the quality of the submitted CV document as well as the probability of participants submitting their documents on time. Since the intervention comes at very low cost, a roll-out to other programs potentially has a high individual and social rate of return.