On the scientific evaluation of Germany's active labour market policy : an overview

Abstract

"The paper gives an overview of the more recent scientific literature on the evaluation of Germany's active labour market policy (ALMP). The basic problem of microeconomic evaluation is estimating the control group for non-participation, whether on the basis of a comparable control group of non-participants or on the basis of the situation existing before participation. What is decisive here is taking into account the potential selection problems. Evaluation studies at macro-level also have to consider in addition the indirect effects of ALMP on the labour market as a whole and take into account the possible endogenity of ALMP. Most of the evaluation studies for Germany show no significantly positive employment effects of ALMP but contain a great deal of statistical uncertainty. We essentially attribute the latter to the fact that owing to an insufficient data range extremely heterogeneous measures are usually pooled and that too little background information is available about participants and non-participants. As a result of these data restrictions a rash verdict about the economic effects of ALMP is out of the question from the point of view of the authors, although possible positive effects can not be particularly strong since they would otherwise presumably have been identified empirically in spite of different methods and inadequate data." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Fitzenberger, B. & Speckesser, S. (2000): Zur wissenschaftlichen Evaluation der Aktiven Arbeitsmarktpolitik in Deutschland. Ein Überblick. In: Mitteilungen aus der Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Vol. 33, No. 3, p. 357-370.