This reference paper describes the sampling and contents of the IZA Evaluation Dataset Survey and outlines its vast potential for research in labor economics. The data have been part of a unique IZA project to connect administrative data from the German Federal Employment Agency with innovative...

Die Gründungsförderung der Bundesagentur für Arbeit ist im Rahmen der aktiven Arbeitsmarktpolitik im Rechtskreis SGB III nach wie vor eines der bedeutsamsten Instrumente. Zum 1. August 2006 löste der Gründungszuschuss (§ 57 SGB III) seine beiden Vorgänger, das Überbrückungsgeld und den...

Turning unemployment into self-employment has become an increasingly important part of active labor market policies (ALMP) in many OECD countries. Germany is a good example where the spending on start-up subsidies for the unemployed accounted for nearly 17% of the total spending on ALMP in 2004....

The German government has spent between 7bn and 11bn Euro per year on active labor market policies (ALMP) in East Germany in the last decade. The effectiveness of the most important programs (in terms of participants and spending) such as job-creation schemes and vocational training has been...

This paper evaluates the effects of job creation schemes on the participating individuals in Germany. Since previous empirical studies of these measures have been based on relatively small datasets and focussed on East Germany, this is the first study which allows to draw policy-relevant...

Persistently high unemployment, tight government budgets and the growing scepticism regarding the effects of active labour market policies (ALMP) are the basis for a growing interest in evaluating these measures. This paper intends to explain the need for evaluation on the micro- and...

Most evaluation studies of active labour market policies (ALMP) focus on the microeconometric evaluation approach using individual data. However, as the microeconometric approach usually ignores impacts on the non-participants, it should be seen as a first step to a complete evaluation which has...

In this paper we evaluate the employment effects of job creation schemes on the participating individuals in Germany. Job creation schemes are a major element of active labour market policy in Germany and are targeted at long-term unemployed and other hard-to-place individuals. Access to very...

Propensity Score Matching (PSM) has become a popular approach to estimate causal treatment effects. It is widely applied when evaluating labour market policies, but empirical examples can be found in very diverse fields of study. Once the researcher has decided to use PSM, he is confronted with...

Recent microeconometric evaluation studies have shown that start-up subsidies for unemployed individuals are an effective policy tool to improve long-term employment and income prospects of participants, in particular compared to other active labor market programs (e.g. training, job search...