We conduct a comparative analysis of Labor Market Policies and outcomes for the EUmember states, for the period 2000-2005. We document the main differences in LaborMarket Policies across EU members, including new member states after 2004...

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

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...

We use a new and exceptionally rich administrative data set for Germany to evaluate theemployment effects of a variety of public sponsored training programs in the early 2000s.Building on the work of Sianesi (2003, 2004), we employ propensity score matching methodsin a dynamic, multiple...

Angesichts der derzeitigen schlechten Arbeitsmarktlage besteht trotz vielerlei widerstreitender Ansichten zumindest in einer Hinsicht Konsens: Mit den bisher eingesetzten Mitteln und Instrumenten ist das Ziel eines Abbaus der Arbeitslosigkeit nicht erreicht worden. Daher liegt es nahe, nach...

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

Germany and France are both Continental European welfare states with severe labor marketproblems such as low employment and high and persistent unemployment which can beexplained by labor market institutions that inhibit labor market adaptability...

This paper tests the signalling hypothesis using detailed flow-based employer-employee data from Denmark. The primary focus is to explore how the conditions in the pre-displacement firm affect the duration of unemployment. The empirical analysis is conducted within a competing risk framework,...

We exploit homogeneous firm level data of manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors to study the impact of firing restrictions on job flow dynamics across 14 European countries. We find that more stringent firing laws dampen the response of job destruction to the cycle, thus making job...

Having faced high unemployment rates for more than a decade, the German government implemented a comprehensive set of labour market reforms during the period 2003-2005. This paper describes the economic and institutional context of the German labour market before and after these so-called Hartz...