The Great Recession did not only affect European countries to a varying extent, its impact onnational labour markets and on specific socio-economic groups in those markets also variedgreatly. Institutional arrangements such as employment protection, unemployment insurancebenefits and minimum...

Recent empirical evidence has found that employment services and small-businessassistance programmes are often successful at getting the unemployed back to work. Oneimportant concern of policy makers is to decide which of these two programmes is moreeffective and for whom...

Based on a sequence of reforms in the Norwegian unemployment insurance (UI) system, weshow that activity-oriented UI regimes – i.e., regimes with a high likelihood of requiredparticipation in active labor market programs, duration limitations on unconditional UIentitlements, and high sanction...

In July 2004, the Belgian government intensified monitoring within the UnemploymentInsurance scheme. Workers claiming unemployment benefits for more than 13 months arenotified that past job-search behavior will be monitored 8 months later...

Employers who use temporary agency staff in contrast to regular staff are not affected byemployment protection regulations when terminating a job. Therefore, services providedby temporary work agencies may be seen as a substitute for regular employment. In thispaper, we analyze the effects of...

The evaluation of labor market policies has become an important issue in many Europeancountries. In recent years, a number of them have opened their administrative databases forevaluation studies. The advantages of administrative data are straightforward: they areaccurate, contain a large number...

A substantial number of young unemployed participate in active labor market programs(ALMP) in Germany each year. While the aims of these programs are clear – a fast reintegrationinto employment or enrollment in further education – a comprehensive analysis oftheir effectiveness has yet to be...

Die Gründungsförderung der Bundesagentur für Arbeit ist im Rahmen der aktivenArbeitsmarktpolitik im Rechtskreis SGB III nach wie vor eines der bedeutsamstenInstrumente. Zum 1. August 2006 löste der Gründungszuschuss (§ 57 SGB III) seine beidenVorgänger, das Überbrückungsgeld und den...

In this paper we investigate two stages in the process that leads to participation in ALMP programs. We use unique administrative data from the Austrian unemployment registers which allow us to distinguish between caseworker assignment and actual program enrollment. Although 25% of newly...

Die Beschäftigung älterer Arbeitnehmer in Deutschland hat in den letzten Jahren merklichzugenommen. Die Studie untersucht diese jüngste Verbesserung der ArbeitsmarktsituationÄlterer und analysiert den Beitrag, den die arbeitsmarkt- und sozialpolitischen Reformen derletzten Jahre dabei...