In some countries including Germany unemployed workers can increase their income by working a few hours per week. The intention is to keep unemployed job seekers attached to the labour market and to increase their job-finding probabilities. To analyze the unemployment dynamics of job seekers...

Increasing work incentives for people with low incomes is a common topic in the policy debate across European countries. The "Mini-Job" reform in Germany -- introduced on April 1, 2003 -- can be seen in line with these policies, exempting labour income below a certain threshold from taxes and...

Increasing work incentives for people with low incomes is a common topic in the policy debate across European countries. The "Mini-Job" reform in Germany - introduced on April 1, 2003 - can be seen in line with these policies, exempting labour income below a certain threshold from taxes and...

Many countries support business start-ups to spur economic growth and reduce unemployment with different programmes. Evaluation studies of such programmes commonly rely on the conditional independence assumption (CIA), allowing a causal interpretation of the results only if all relevant...

The promotion of self-employment as part of active labor market policies is considered to be one of the most important unemployment support schemes in Germany. Against this background the main part of this thesis contributes to the evaluation of start-up support schemes within ALMP. Chapter 2...

Turning unemployment into self-employment is a suitable alternative to traditional active labor market policies in many developed countries. Start-up subsidies can assist unemployed workers in setting up their own business. This option can be especially interesting for people whose work is...

Many countries support business start-ups to spur economic growth and reduce unemployment with different programmes. Evaluation studies of such programmes commonly rely on the conditional independence assumption (CIA), allowing a causal interpretation of the results only if all relevant...