Labour market policies for the unemployed combine passive income support with active measures that aim at improving jobseekers' employment prospects. This paper extends the theoretical framework developed by Pavoni and Violante (2005a) for the optimal choice between different active and passive...

Many Western economies have reformed their welfare systems with the aim of activating welfare recipients by increasing welfare-to-work programmes and job search enforcement. We evaluate the three most important German welfare-to-work programmes implemented after a major reform in January 2005...

We estimate short, medium, and long-run individual labor market effects of training programs for unemployed by following program participation on a monthly basis over a tenyear period. Since analyzing the effectiveness of training over such a long period is impossible with experimental data, we...

We analyse the effects of government sponsored training for the unemployed conducted during East German transition. For the microeconometric analysis, we use a new, large and informative administrative database that allows us to use matching methods to reduce potential selection bias, to study...

We provide new evidence on the effectiveness of West German labour market programmes by evaluating training and employment programmes that have been conducted 2000 - 2002 after the first large reform of German labour market policy in 1998. We employ exceptionally rich administrative data that...

Nationwide health interventions are difficult to evaluate as contemporaneous control groups do not exist and before-after approaches are usually infeasible. We propose an alternative semi-parametric estimator that is based on the assumption that the intervention has no direct effect on the...

Using exceptionally rich linked administrative and survey information on German welfare recipients we investigate the health effects of transitions from welfare to employment and of assignments to welfare-to-work programmes. Applying semi-parametric propensity score matching estimators we find...

Between 1991 and 1997 West Germany spent on average about 3.6 bn Euro per year on public sector sponsored training programmes for the unemployed. We base our empirical analysis on a new administrative data base that plausibly allows for selectivity correction by microeconometric matching...

We investigate the effects of the most important East German active labour market programmes on the labour market outcomes of their participants. The analysis is based on a large and informative individual database coming from administrative data sources. Using matching methods, we find that...

Almost 15 years after Unification in 1990, Germany is still struggling with the economic consequences of this event. Although the East German economy has made considerable progress since its near-collapse after the German monetary, economic and social union in July 1990, the East German labour...