Die Ich-AG (Existenzgründungszuschuss) war eines der zentralen Instrumente, das im Rahmen der Hartz-Reformen in den arbeitsmarktpolitischen Kanon aufgenommen wurde. Zusammen mit dem bereits seit langem bekannten Überbrückungsgeld wurden damit zwischen 2003 und 2006 mehr als eine Million...

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....

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...

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...

The need to evaluate the performance of active labour market policies is not questioned any longer. Even though OECD countries spend significant shares of national resources on these measures, unemployment rates remain high or even increase. We focus on microeconometric evaluation which has to...

In this paper, we consider fiscal competition between jurisdictions. Capital taxes are used to finance a public input and two public goods, one which benefits mobile skilled workers and one which benefits immobile unskilled workers. We derive the jurisdictions' reaction functions for different...

Matching has become a popular approach to estimate average treatment effects. It is based on the conditional independence or unconfoundedness assumption. Checking the sensitivity of the estimated results with respect to deviations from this identifying assumption has become an increasingly...

Fostering and supporting start-up businesses by unemployed persons has become an increasingly important issue in many European countries. These new ventures are being supported by various governmental programs. Potential benefits include not only the end of unemployment for the new entrepreneur...

Support schemes for unemployed aiming for self-employment have been recently reformed several times. In 2003, the start-up subsidy" was added to the existing bridging allowance". In 2006 both instruments were merged to the Gründungszuschuss". Since the bridging allowance has been evaluated as...

Turning unemployment into self-employment has become a major focus of German active labour market policy (ALMP) in recent years. If effective, this would not only reduce Germany's persistently high unemployment rate, but also increase its notoriously low self-employment rate. Empirical evidence...