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...

For Germany, we analyse the (relative) effects of participation in several active labour market programmes on the employment prospects of participants. First, our results show that different matching algorithms result in different severe problems of common support. Second, we obtain favourable...

Our paper estimates the average effect of wage subsidies – paid to employers for a limited period of time – on the labour market prospects of needy job-seekers without access to insurance-paid 'unemployment benefit I'. The results show that wage subsidies had large and significant favourable...

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...

In many countries, caseworkers in a public employment office have the dual roles of counselling and monitoring unemployed persons. These roles often conflict with each other leading to important caseworker heterogeneity: Some consider providing services to their clients and satisfying their...

We investigate the effects of the most important East German active labour market programmes on the labour market outcomes of their participants. The analysis is based on a large and informative individual database coming from administrative data sources. Using matching methods, we find that...

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...

We analyse the effects of government-sponsored training for the unemployed conducted during East German transition. For the microeconometric analysis, we use a new, large and informative administrative database that allows us to use matching methods to reduce potential selection bias, to study...

We estimate the effects of active labour market policies (ALMP) on subsequent employment by nonparametric instrumental variables and matching estimators. Very informative administrative Swiss data with detailed regional information are combined with exogenous regional variation in programme...

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...