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...

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of occupational training programs for the unemployed before and after the substantial amendments in German labor market legislation known as Hartz reforms. Based on the official evaluation of the reforms, we show that program impacts vary much across...

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...

Each year Germany and many other developed economies spend tens of billions of Euros on active measures of employment promotion with the explicit aim of contributing to the reduction of unemployment. Yet, high unemployment has universally been a persistent problem throughout the last two...

Das heutige System der sozialen Mindestsicherung verhindert in Deutschland die Ausbildung eines Niedriglohnsektors. Dies ist eine wesentliche Ursache für die hohe Arbeitslosigkeit Geringqualifizierter. Dieser Beitrag stellt zwei häufig genannte Maßnahmen zur Überwindung sozialstaatlicher...

This paper assesses the dynamics of treatment effects arising from variation in the duration of training. We use German administrative data that have the extraordinary feature that the amount of treatment varies continuously from 10 days to 395 days (i.e. 13 months). This feature allows us to...