Flexible hiring and firing rules, generous unemployment insurance and an active monitoring and assistance of the unemployed; those are the main elements of the Danish Flexicurity model that several Belgian politicians cite as a solution for our high unemployment rate. Many researchers stress the importance of the activation policy towards the unemployed. Others on the contrary, can not find a direct positive effect of specific assistance programs on employment. This paper builds a bridge between both views by showing that the motivation of the unemployed to find a job, ultimately comes from the threat to have to attend such an assistance program.

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