Marginal employment', i.e. employment at low working hours and earnings not covered by social security, has been gaining importance in the German economy over the past decade. Using a large newly available panel data set and statistical matching techniques, we analyse the effects of marginal...

Starting in mid-2007, the global financial crisis quickly metamorphosed from the bursting of the housing bubble in the US to the worst recession the world has witnessed for over six decades. Through an in-depth review of the crisis in terms of the causes, consequences and policy responses, this...

We study the job training provided under the US Workforce Investment Act (WIA) to adults and dislocated workers in two states. Our substantive contributions center on impacts estimated non-experimentally using administrative data. These impacts compare WIA participants who do and do not receive...

We analyse the effects of active social policy (ASP) on the dynamics of welfare dependence. We evaluate the impact of various ASP measures (employment and training) on the duration of welfare spells and subsequent employment spells, based on data from Denmark. The results show that employment...

We combine two techniques to consistently estimate the effect of active labour market programmes and, in particular, active labour market policy regimes. Our aim is to explicitly estimate the threat effect of active labour market programmes. Based on Danish data (1998- 2002) from administrative...

In the second part of the 1990?s Switzerland conducted an ambitious active labour market policy (ALMP) encompassing a wide variety of programmes. We evaluate the effects of these programmes on the individual employment probability of potential participants. Our econometric analysis uses...

We investigate the effect of counseling and monitoring on the individual transition rate to employment. We theoretically analyze these policies in a job search model with two search channels and endogenous search effort. In the empirical analysis we use unique administrative and survey data...

Das heutige System der sozialen Mindestsicherung verhindert in Deutschland die Ausbildung eines Niedriglohnsektors. Dies ist eine wesentliche Ursache für die hohe Arbeitslosigkeit Geringqualifizierter. Dieser Beitrag stellt zwei häufig genannte Maßnahmen zur Überwindung sozialstaatlicher...

Having faced high unemployment rates for more than a decade, the German government implemented a comprehensive set of labour market reforms during the period 2003-2005. This paper describes the economic and institutional context of the German labour market before and after these so-called Hartz...