Richard Layard's chapter 11 is very stimulating, and contains an interesting policy proposal to prevent long-term unemployment. His ‘compulsory job scheme’ seems to have more advantages than similar previous schemes. It is neither a pure benefit transfer system (BTP), since work is compulsory, nor a workfare scheme, since the work is not for a benefit but for a regular wage (see also chapter 6 and 7 in this volume). It has also the advantage of avoiding cheating by the would-be long-term unemployed, given that they have to choose between taking a temporary job for six months or losing the unemployment benefit and keeping only their non-market activity income. Therefore, only in the case that the non-market income is much larger than the after-tax compulsory job wage they will choose the first option, but in both cases the free-riding of unemployment benefits will be excluded. Finally, it encourages the potential long-term unemployed to try to find a job before ending up at the compulsory temporary job offered by the proposed scheme.

Nevertheless, I see a series of practical shortcomings in the scheme that could easily be avoided. The first one is that the scheme supposes that it is possible to get a job precisely on day 360 of the unemployment benefit period. Even if the job is compulsory it takes some weeks to find a simple job that does not entail functional or geographical mobility, and even longer if it implies mobility.