"In 2005 major reforms of the means-tested unemployment benefit system were implemented in Germany. One element of the reforms was to activate benefit recipients by a workfare programme, the so-called One-Euro-Job programme. More than 600,000 benefit recipients entered this programme in the year...

"At the start of the year 2005 the Social Code II came into force in Germany. The reform introduced a unified means-tested benefit, the unemployment benefit II, for employable people who live in needy households. Prior to this reform they could have either received unemployment assistance...

"This paper estimates for a sample of means-tested unemployment benefit recipients the effects of their participation in short-term training programmes in Germany. We apply propensity score matching and rely on a large sample of treated and controls from administrative data, which in contrast to...