With the purpose to reduce winter unemployment and to promote all-season employment in the constructions sector, Germany maintains an extensive bad weather allowance system. Since the mid 1990s, these regulations have been subject to several reforms that resemble the range of approaches for...

In recent years, coinciding with the discussion led in many OECD countries, Germany has started to contract out placement services for the unemployed to private agencies. Whereas in the Netherlands and Australia the whole system of employment services was reorganized at once, making an...

Based on new administrative data for Germany covering entrances into job creation schemes between July 2000 and May 2001, we evaluate the effects of this active labour market policy programme on the employability of the participating individuals. The programme effects are estimated considering...

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...