Do more placement officers lead to lower unemployment? : evidence from Germany

"In this paper we examine the effect of a pilot project of the German Federal Employment Agency, where in 14 German local employment offices the caseload (number of unemployed per caseworker) was significantly reduced. Since the participating local offices were not chosen at random, we have to take into account potential selection bias. Therefore, we rely on a combination of matching and a difference-in-differences estimator. We use two indicators of the offices' success (unemployment rate, growth of the number of SCIII clients). Our results indicate a positive effect of a lower caseload on both outcome variables." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))