Between 1991 and 1997 West Germany spent on average about 3.6 bn Euro per year on public sector sponsored training programmes for the unemployed. We base our empirical analysis on a new administrative data base that plausibly allows for selectivity correction by microeconometric matching...

Short-term training has recently become the largest active labor market program in Germany regarding the number of participants. Little is known on the effectiveness of different types of short-term training and on their long-run effects. This paper estimates the effects of short-term training...

As the first, substantive contribution, this paper revisits the effectiveness of two widely used public sponsored training programs, the first one focusing on intensive occupational training and the second one on short-term activation and job entry. We use an exceptionally rich administrative...

This study re-estimates the employment effects of training programs for the unemployed using exogenous variation in participation caused by budget rules in Germany in the 1980s and early 1990s, resulting in the infamous "end-of-year spending". In addition to estimating complier effects with...

We investigate the finite sample properties of a large number of estimators for the average treatment effect on the treated that are suitable when adjustment for observable covariates is required, like inverse probability weighting, kernel and other variants of matching, as well as different...

This paper studies the role of job search assistance programs in optimal welfare-to-work programs. The analysis is based on a framework, that allows for endogenous choice of benefit types and levels, wage taxes or subsidies, and activation measures such as monitoring and job search assistance...