The so-called Hartz reform has introduced fundamental changes for publicly sponsored training in Germany. This concerns primarily the emission of training vouchers as an exclusive allocation device, allowing potential participants free choice among training providers within a given training...

We estimate short, medium, and long-run individual labor market effects of training programs for unemployed by following program participation on a monthly basis over a ten-year period. Since analyzing the effectiveness of training over such a long period is impossible with experimental data, we...

The evaluation of labor market policies has become an important issue in many European countries. In recent years, a number of them have opened their administrative databases for evaluation studies. The advantages of administrative data are straightforward: they are accurate, contain a large...