The 2005 reform of the German welfare system introduced two competing organizational models for welfare administration. In most districts, a centralized organization was established where local welfare agencies are bound to central directives. At the same time, 69 districts were allowed to opt...

Benefit sanctions imposed on non-compliant welfare recipients are a new element in the German welfare system. In practice, the sanction policy and the application of sanctions vary considerably across the 439 welfare agencies. Based on combined administrative and survey data, these differences...

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...

A growing body of programme evaluation literature recognizes immigrants as a disadvantaged group on European labor markets and investigates the employment effects of Active Labor Market Programmes (ALMPs) on this subgroup. Using a meta-analysis, we condense 93 estimates from 33 empirical studies...

I38; J64; C31 </AbstractSection> Copyright Boockmann et al.; licensee Springer. 2014