In many European countries, labor markets are characterized by high regional disparities in terms of unemployment rates on the one hand and low geographical mobility among the unemployed on the other hand. This is somewhat surprising and raises the question of why only minor shares of unemployed...

This reference paper describes the sampling and contents of the IZA Evaluation Dataset Survey and outlines its vast potential for research in labor economics. The data have been part of a unique IZA project to connect administrative data from the German Federal Employment Agency with innovative...

Start-up subsidies for the unemployed have become an important part of Active Labor Market Policy (ALMP) in many countries. Previous evaluation results show pre-dominantly (very) positive results indicating that these programs are an effective way to increase employment probabilities and income...

This reference paper describes the sampling and contents of the IZA Evaluation Dataset Survey and outlines its vast potential for research in labor economics. The data have been part of a unique IZA project to connect administrative data from the German Federal Employment Agency with innovative...

One of the main instruments which was introduced with the 'Hartz-Reforms' was a start-up subsidy called Me Inc. ('Ich-AG'). This instrument was introduced in addition to the Bridging Allowance ('Überbrückungsgeld') which had already been implemented in the 1980s. Between 2003 and 2006 more...

The promotion of self-employment as part of active labour market policy ranks as one of the most important support schemes in Germany. The main idea is to grant unemployed individuals financial support to start their own business and therefore to escape unemployment. For this purpose two schemes...

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....

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....

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...