Public sector sponsored training was implemented at a large scale during the transition process in East Germany. Based on new administrative data, we estimate the differential effects of three different programs for East Germany during the transition process. We apply a dynamic multiple...

Support schemes for unemployed aiming for self-employment have been recently reformed several times. In 2003, the start-up subsidy" was added to the existing bridging allowance". In 2006 both instruments were merged to the Gründungszuschuss". Since the bridging allowance has been evaluated as...

Die Arbeitsmarktreformen der letzten Jahre haben die strukturellen Anpassungsprobleme des deutschen Beschäftigungsmodells zum Teil gelindert - allerdings sind noch längst nicht alle Schwierigkeiten überwunden. Für die Zukunft besteht die zentrale Herausforderung darin, eine...

Arguably, one of the most important developments in the field of applied economics during the last decades has been the emergence of systematic policy evaluation, with its distinct focus on the establishment of causality. By contrast to the natural sciences, the objects of our scientific...

Taking advantage of a complex minimum wage structure in Honduras, this paper examines how changes in minimum wages over the 1990-2004 period affect unemployment as well as the employment and average wages of workers in different sectors of the economy: medium and large-scale firms v. small firms...

We use a new and exceptionally rich administrative data set for Germany to evaluate the employment 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 methods in a dynamic, multiple...

Turning unemployment into self-employment has become a major focus of German active labour market policy (ALMP) in recent years. If effective, this would not only reduce Germany's persistently high unemployment rate, but also increase its notoriously low self-employment rate. Empirical evidence...

State and federal reforms of the 1990s transformed the U.S. cash assistance program for single parents and their children. Despite an extensive literature examining these changes and their impacts, there have been few studies that consider the effects of these reforms from the perspective of the...

While anecdotal evidence suggests that interest groups play a key role in shaping immigration, there is no systematic empirical evidence on this issue. To motivate our analysis, we develop a simple theoretical model where migration policy is the result of the interaction between organized groups...

Population policies are defined here as voluntary programs which help people control their fertility and expect to improve their lives. There are few studies of the long-run effects of policy-induced changes in fertility on the welfare of women, such as policies that subsidize the diffusion and...