Christopher O'Leary, Senior Economist, W.E. Upjohn Institute

Christopher J. O'Leary, Senior Economist

Christopher J. O'Leary is a senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. His research on unemployment insurance (UI) has examined experience rating, benefit adequacy, profiling, partial benefits and reemployment bonuses. The research on bonuses and UI partial benefits involved large field experiments with random trials in Washington State. He has evaluated job training, wage subsidies, public works, self-employment, and employment service programs for labor ministries in Canada and the economic transition countries of Hungary, Poland, Serbia, and China. For the U.S. Department of Labor he developed a prototype frontline decision support system for one-stop career centers under the Workforce Investment Act, and analyzed practical aspects of implementing personal reemployment accounts. His research has also been sponsored by the World Bank, the International Labor Office (ILO), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. He recently examined labor market information (LMI) systems for the Canadian employment ministry. Currently, for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services he is investigating the use of UI by recent recipients of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), and for the U.S. Department of Labor he is studying recent trends in UI use based on state administrative records.

His papers have appeared in Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, International Labour Review, New England Economic Review, Economics of Transition, and Applied Economics. He is co-author of Manual on Evaluation of Labour Market Policies in Transition Economies (Geneva: ILO. 2001.) and co-editor of research volumes on unemployment insurance, job training, and employment services. O'Leary completed undergraduate studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Arizona. In 1999 he was elected to the National Academy of Social Insurance.

Selected recent publications include

UI as a Safety Net for Former TANF Recipients, a report submitted to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), 2008.
"State UI job search rules and reemployment services," (with Stephen A. Wandner) in Monthly Labor Review. 129(6): 27-37, June 2006.
"Cost-Effectiveness of Targeted Reemployment Bonuses," (with Paul T. Decker and Stephen A. Wandner) in Journal of Human Resources. 40(1): 270-279, Winter 2005.
Job Training Policy in the United States (co-edited with Robert A. Straits and Stephen A. Wandner). Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute, 2004.
Labor Exchange Policy in the United States (co-edited with David E. Balducchi and Randall W. Eberts). Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute, 2004.
Targeting Employment Services (co-edited with Randall W. Eberts and Stephen A. Wandner). Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute, 2002.
Manual on Evaluation of Labour Market Policies in Transition Economies, (with Alena Nesporova and Alexander Samorodov). Geneva: International Labor Office. 2001.
"New Ways of Evaluating State Unemployment Insurance," (with Robert Tannenwald, Wei- Jang Huang, and Pei Zhu) in New England Economic Review, March/April 1999.
Unemployment Insurance in the United States: Analysis of Policy Issues, (edited with Stephen A. Wandner), Kalamazoo, Mich., W.E. Upjohn Institute, 1997.

Recent testimony

Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Human Resources of the House Committee on Ways and Means, April 10, 2003, on the Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services (WPRS) system.

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