Using exceptionally rich linked administrative and survey information on German welfare recipients we investigate the health effects of transitions from welfare to employment and of assignments to welfare-to-work programmes. Applying semi-parametric propensity score matching estimators we find...

Many Western economies have reformed their welfare systems with the aim of activating welfare recipients by increasing welfare-to-work programmes and job search enforcement. We evaluate the three most important German welfare-to-work programmes implemented after a major reform in January 2005...

We provide new evidence on the effectiveness of West German labour market programmes by evaluating training and employment programmes that have been conducted 2000-2002 after the first large reform of German labour market policy in 1998. We employ exceptionally rich administrative data that...

This paper investigates active labour market programs in Austria with a special emphasis on male-female effect heterogeneity. On average, we find only small effects, if any, for most of the programs. A crucial advantage of the large and informative administrative data we use is that it provides...

The effects of active labour market policies (ALMP) on individual employment chances and earnings are evaluated by non-parametric instrumental variables based on Swiss administrative data with detailed regional information. Using an exogenous variation in the participation probabilities across...

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

We investigate the allocation of unemployed individuals to different subprograms within Swiss active labour market policy by the caseworkers at local employment offices in Switzerland in 1998. We are particularly interested in whether the caseworkers allocate the unemployed to services in ways...

Subsidized employment is an important tool of active labour market policies to improve the chances of the unemployed to find permanent employment. Using informative individual administrative data, we investigate the effects of two different schemes of subsidized temporary employment implemented...

Based on new, exceptionally informative and large German linked employer-employee administrative data, we investigate the question whether the omission of important control variables in matching estimation leads to biased impact estimates of typical active labour market programs for the...

In an evaluation of a job-training program, the influence of the program on the individual earnings capacity is important, because it reflects the program effect on human capital. Estimating these effects is complicated because earnings are observed for employed individuals only, and employment...