For selected target groups, such as unemployed and disadvantaged youth, Christoph Ehlert demonstrates that flexible and well-targeted programmes significantly improve employment chances. To be effective, these programmes must combine individual coaching, classroom training and temporary work....

Our paper analyzes the role of public employment agencies in job matching, in particular the effects of the restructuring of the Federal Employment Agency in Germany (Hartz III labor market reform) for aggregate matching and unemployment. Based on two microeconomic datasets, we show that the...

In recent years, coinciding with the discussion led in many OECD countries, Germany has started to contract out placement services for the unemployed to private agencies. Whereas in the Netherlands and Australia the whole system of employment services was reorganized at once, making an...