In direct job creation schemes, unemployed individuals at risk of permanent labour market exclusion are offered temporary subsidised employment in public or non-profit sector firms in combination with skills training and socio-pedagogical support. The main aim is to stabilise and qualify them for later reintegration into the regular labour market. Exploiting exogenous regional variation in population-groupspecific programme capacities, I find evidence that such a job creation scheme is, on average, effective in providing a bridge to a regular job.

This paper uses firm-level panel data of on-the-job training to estimate its impact on productivity and wages. To this end, we apply and extend the control function approach for estimating production functions, which allows us to correct for the endogeneity of input factors and training. We find that the productivity premium of a trained worker is substantially higher compared to the wage premium. Our results are consistent with recent theories that explain work-related training by imperfect competition in the labor market.

The submitted paper brings information from administrative data on registered unemployed people in Slovakia. This data are employed to evaluate a training programme which is a part of the portfolio of active labour market measures provided by the Slovak public employment offices. To evaluate the impact of the measure, propensity score matching was used with a combination of a nearest neighbour and exact matching approach. Negative effects were observable on individuals chances of getting a job during the period of 24 months after the programme.

How does labour market policy affect welfare recipients and long-term unemployed people? We investigate whether job search assistance (JSA) helps disadvantaged individuals to find jobs and whether courses or individual counselling is more successful in reaching this goal. To evaluate individual employment effects, we apply a quasi-experimental design and construct suitable comparison groups using propensity score matching methods. We compare participants to nonparticipants as well as participants of both schemes directly.

La Evaluación se ha realizado mediante dos aproximaciones analíticas complementarias: un análisis cualitativo, con entrevistas a informantes clave de ambos programas (gestores municipales, educadores, responsables del SOC, etc.), que pretende recoger y entender la visiòn de estas personas sobre su funcionamiento; y un análisis cuantitativo, a partir de las bases de datos disponibles, que explora tanto cuestiones relacionadas con la implementaciòn de los programas (grado de cobertura, características de los beneficiarios, etc.) como las relativas a sus impactos sobre las posibilidades de ins

In Finnish labour market policy, labour market training and subsidised employment are seen as the key methods. The aim of the paper is to evaluate effectiveness of labour market training (LMT) and subsidised employment (SE) in Finland 1990 and 1992.

the Mobility Lists is an Italian labour market policy targeted to dismissed employees combining a wage subsidy to an income support. Benefits varies according to the size of the dismissing firm and with the worker age at dismissal. We exploit the variability of these provisions to evaluate the impact of the programme. We use linked administrative data from two sources for two Italian provinces to evaluate the impact of the policy on the probability to work over the 36 months subsequent to enrolment in the Lists.

In 1994 a social experiment was conducted in Denmark, where unemployed applicants for classroom training were randomised into treatment and control groups. The data are contaminated by the presence of no-shows and crossovers, biasing the traditional experimental estimator. We interpret our experiment within an economic model of agents maximising outcomes facing different cost regimes and present results interpretable within this model. Surprisingly, we find that classroom training significantly increases individual unemployment rates and decreases employability.

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 treatment approach using matching based on inflows into unemployment. We find positive medium- and long-run employment effects for the largest program, Provision of Specific Professional Skills and Techniques.

We provide new evidence on the effectiveness of West German labour market programmes by evaluating training and employment programmes that have been conducted 2000 - 2002 after the first large reform of German labour market policy in 1998. We employ exceptionally rich administrative data that allow us to use microeconometric matching methods and to estimate interesting effects for different types of programmes and participants at a rather disaggregated level. We find that, on average, all programmes fail to improve their participants' chances of finding regular, unsubsidised employment.