The recent reform of the Bundesagentur für Arbeit, Germany’s Public Employment Service (PES), has introduced elements of New Public Management, including internal controlling and attempts at standardizing assessments ('pro-filing' of unemployed people) and procedures. Based on qualitative...

We evaluate a randomized experiment of a statistical support system developed to assist caseworkers in Swiss employment offices in choosing appropriate active labour market programmes for their unemployed clients. This statistical support system predicted the labour market outcome for each...

Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Bedeutung der Vermittlungsfachkräfte für die Umsetzung von Reformen innerhalb der Bundesagentur für Arbeit. Zum einen wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie Arbeitsvermittler die Neuausrichtung des Geschäftssystems, in dem sie sich bewegen, beurteilen. Zum...

A German policy experiment from 2012 allows me to identify the short-run and longrun causal effects of decentralization on the placement efficiency of public employment services (PES). I exploit variation over time and across districts with different types of PES in a difference-in-differences...

Unemployment insurance is a key tool for risk sharing and redistribution and also a prominent automatic stabiliser. It is a volatile spending item by design, which can lead to vulnerabilities. This paper explores various shocks and sources of vulnerability of the unemployment insurance schemes...