Policy and Complex Systems
Table 6 — BehaviorSearch exploration steps
1 . Designing a quantitative measure for the labor market outcome or policy that policymaker is interested in .
2 . Choosing parameters to vary and what ranges are allowed . 3 . Choosing a search algorithm and running it .
4 . Final examination of the results , studying what parameters most affect the initially defined labor market outcome or policy .
By changing the model parameters , the user can therefore explore alternative policy measures that might lead to different labor market outcomes altering the economic efficiency of a given policy .
Finally , the versatility of the model allows the integration of any further information gathered about the regional labor market or the implemented form of each Active Labor Market Policy ( ALMP ). The model can therefore be used to study the relationship between treatment effects on the individual level and the macroeconomic outcome . For this reason , we attempt to quantify the effect within the agent-based model by dividing the workers into equally sized groups , one of treated and one of non-treated workers . The setup of two test experiments is described below . In the experiments that follow , different run-periods of the algorithm described in the Functional Specification paragraph are selected . 4.1 - Job displacement effects
A first base test concerns the impact of an increased subsidized training : comparing a “ base ” and an “ incremented ” subsidy . The worker agents are thus divided into two groups . The first group , “ base subsidized ,” contains agents with only the initial wealth as defined in the initial setup , while the second group , “ incremented subsidized ” workers , contains agents with an extra one fifth of the initial wealth , which constitutes the subsidy . After that the simulation is run . Finally , the employment rate is checked against the base condition .
The user input values are set as in the Baseline model ( Table 4 ). After 1,000 steps , the tool provides an increase in the average final employment rate of two points .
Table 7 — Experiment Subsidized training Subsidized training
Strict
Initial wealth Unemployment rate 0.99 10 2.74 % 0.99 15 2.68 % 0.98 10 4.71 % 0.98 15 4.62 %
25