This book argues that active labour market policies are necessary to improve the position of the unemployed but have so far performed relatively poorly. The contributing authors seek ways to improve active labour market policy and consider three means of doing so: improving the quality by better...

Immer mehr Kinder in Deutschland nutzen eine Kindertagesbetreuung. Wie beeinflusst die Familienpolitik diese Nutzung? Wie wirken einzelne ehe- und familienpolitische Maßnahmen und inwiefern unterscheiden sich diese Wirkungen für unterschiedliche Familientypen? Diesen Fragen widmet sich der...

We apply a structural model of mothers’ labor supply and child care choices to evaluate the effects of two child care reforms in Germany that were introduced simultaneously. A legal claim to subsidized child care became effective for children aged 1 year or older. Moreover, a new child care...

Summary Duration data derived from retrospective surveys often show an abnormal concentration of responses at certain durations. This common kind of measurement error is known as “heaping” in the statistical literature. We show how heaping effects can be modelled within a maximum likelihood...

Summary We analyze the effectiveness of publicly financed training and retraining programs in east Germany as measured by their effects on individual re-employment probabilities after training. These are estimated by discrete hazard rate models on the basis of individual-level panel data. We...