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...

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...

Previous empirical studies of job creation schemes in Germany have shown that the average effects for the participating individuals are negative. However, we find that this is not true for all strata of the population. Identifying individual characteristics that are responsible for the effect...

We provide the first estimates of the impact of managers' risk preferences on their training allocation decisions. Our conceptual framework links managers' risk preferences to firms' training decisions through the bonuses they expect to receive. Risk-averse managers are expected to select...

When unemployed persons go into business, they often are characterized as necessity entrepreneurs, because push factors, namely their unemployment, likely prompted their decision. In contrast to this, business founders who have been previously employed represent opportunity entrepreneurs because...