Long - term public sector sponsored training programs often show little or negative short - run employment effects and often it is not possible to assess whether positive long - run effects exist. Based on unique administrative data, this paper estimates the long - run differential employment effects of three different types of training programs in West Germany.
In this paper we evaluate the efficiency of unemployed training programmes in Latvia, using propensity score matching. Primary data files provided by the State Employment Agency of Latvia are used to construct the individual database of unemployed and programme participants.
Since 1994, unemployed workers in the Danish labour market have participated in active labour market programmes on a large scale. This paper contributes with an assessment of costs and benefits of these programmes. Long-term treatment effects are estimated on a very detailed administrative dataset by propensity score matching. For the years 1995 - 2005 it is found that private job training programmes have substantial positive employment and earnings effects, but also public job training ends up with positive earnings effects.
We evaluate the labour market outcomes of a French training programme for youth, using a non- experimental sample of individuals who completed their studies (or dropped out) in 1998 and were observed until 2003. We use propensity score matching to estimate the impact of participation on three outcome variables: the net monthly wage, the monthly income and the probability of employment. We find a positive impact of participation on all three outcome variables. Non parametric robustness checks confirmed our results.
This article revisits the effectiveness of public-sponsored training programs for Germany accounting for dynamic selection into heterogeneous programs. We carefully assess to what extent various aspects of our empirical strategy, such as conditioning flexibly on employment and benefit histories, the availability of rich data, handling of later program participations, and further methodological choices affect our estimates.
Further vocational training for the unemployed aims at enhancing their job prospects. This paper analyzes the effectiveness of subsidized training programs for means-tested unemployment benefit recipients in Germany. The empirical findings are based on rich administrative data from the German Federal Employment Agency using propensity score matching to construct a suitable comparison group.
We investigate the effect of counseling and monitoring on the individual transition rate to employment. We theoretically analyze these policies in a job search model with two search channels and endogenous search effort. In the empirical analysis we use unique administrative and survey data concerning a social experiment with full randomization and compliance. The results do not provide evidence that counseling and monitoring affect the exit rate to work. Monitoring causes a shift from informal to formal job search.
Job placement vouchers can be regarded as a tool to spur competition between public and private job placement activities. The German government launched this instrument in order to end the public placement monopoly and to subsidize its private competitors. We exploit very rich administrative data provided for the first time by the Federal Employment Agency and apply propensity score matching as a method to solve the fundamental evaluation problem and to estimate the effect of the vouchers.
This paper investigates long-term returns from unemployment compensation, exploiting variation from the UK JSA reform of 1996, which implied a major increase in job search requirements for eligibility and in the related administrative hurdle. Search theory predicts that such changes should raise the proportion of nonclaimant nonemployed, with consequences on search effort and labor market attachment, and lower the reservation wage of the unemployed, with negative effects on post-unemployment wages. I test these ideas on longitudinal data from social security records (LLMDB).
One goal of the public employment service is to facilitate matching between unemployed job seekers and job vacancies; another goal is to monitor job search so as to bring search efforts among the unemployed in line with search requirements. The referral of job seekers to vacancies is one instrument used for these purposes. We report results from a randomized Swedish experiment where the outcome of referrals is examined. To what extent do unemployed individuals actually apply for the jobs they are referred to?
