UHLENDORFF Arne

This dissertation focuses on school-to-work transitions and related labor market policies, particularly for troubled youth. Based on field experiments conducted in France in 2018 and 2019, it includes three chapters that add new empirical evidence to the economic literature.The first chapter provides new evidence on the strong job insertion of apprentices. It shows that the success of apprenticeship does not rely, in the French context, on better access to employment for those who do not remain in their training company. The expansion of apprenticeship thus has very limited effects on youth unemployment if it is not accompanied by an increase in retention in the training company.The second chapter contributes to a better understanding of employers' preferences regarding the profiles of young school dropouts. It shows that dropouts who have been inactive for more than two years are much less likely to be recalled for employment than high school graduates. Subsidized employment and job training increase dropouts' chances, but their chances still remain low. Only the combination of these two policies allows dropouts to catch up with those who did not drop out of school, reducing the negative signals associated with dropping out of school and length of time out of the labor force.The third chapter presents a field experiment to analyze the effectiveness of SMS messages sent to direct youth who are neither in employment nor in training to public support structures. All SMS messages were individualized and included specific information about these structures. The results indicate that the texts did not have a significant effect on the likelihood of referring to these facilities. These results show that texting this population is not an effective strategy to direct them more easily to a public assistance solution.The main argument of this thesis, therefore, is to bridge the gaps between schools and businesses so that a significant proportion of youth can avoid a non-employment situation as their first experience in the labor market.

This thesis explores the impact of information on job search behavior and demand for vocational training.The first chapter evaluates the impact of the Bob Emploi website, which aims to deliver information to job seekers about the labor market. The results indicate that there is no impact on job seekers' search effort and geographic and sectoral scope of the search. However, job seekers who use Bob Emploi mobilize their personal network and public employment services more. Finally, there is no effect on well-being and return to employment.The second chapter examines the role of information on entering job training. Results indicate that receiving an email with a message emphasizing post-training return-to-work opportunities more than doubles the likelihood that job seekers will call the training center again. However, callback rates are low in absolute terms (less than 1%) and there is no impact on training enrollment. Our results suggest that the impact detected on calls is due more to the increase in importance placed on training information than to the updating of job seekers' beliefs.Finally, the third chapter also studies the demand for vocational training, but takes into account behavioral constraints. Distinguishing between "external" (world) and "internal" (self) beliefs, the results show that jobseekers are financially constrained from joining a training program, and that they underestimate the proportion of available training that is funded. Internal barriers related to self-efficacy, inter-temporal preferences, self-esteem, and organizational skills are mentioned equally by jobseekers indicating internal barriers to enrolling in training. Based on this diagnosis, the last part is devoted to the design of a randomized controlled trial, with interventions based on the transmission of information via online courses, and interactive sessions by groups of job seekers. These courses aim to target external beliefs, internal beliefs, or both simultaneously.

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