Proficiency in the host country's language is an important factor for a successful labor market integration of immigrants. In this study we analyze the effects of a language training program for professional purposes on the employment opportunities of the participants. We apply an instrumental...

We estimate the effect of language training on subsequent employment and wages of immigrants under essential heterogeneity. The identifying variation is based on regional differences in language training availability that we use to instrument endogenous participation. Estimating marginal...

This paper analyzes how dynamic agglomeration effects differ between foreign and native workers using administrative data on individual employment biographies. According to our results, both groups benefit, on average, equally from gathering work experience in large labor markets. The exception...

With the German Microcensus we study the second generation's educational attainment in Germany focusing on the descendants of classic labour migrants. Our results show that educational outcomes in terms of attending or completing the highest schooling track leading to the Abitur considerably...

The paper analyses the impact of regional own-ethnic concentration on the language proficiency of immigrants. It solves the endogeneity of immigrants' location choices by exploiting the fact that guest-workers in Germany after WWII were initially placed by firms and labor agencies. We find a...

Sequences of active labour market programmes (ALMPs) may be part of an intensified activation strategy targeting hard-to-place individuals who may be long-term unemployed and who may encounter extreme difficulty in finding jobs. Such sequences are very common among welfare recipients in Germany,...

Job creation schemes have been one of the most important programmes of active labour market policy in Germany throughout the 1990s and into the first decade of the new century. A number of studies have analysed the effects of job creation schemes in Germany, presenting an overall disappointing...

This paper provides an overview of the sequential shift towards activating labour market and social policy in Germany. It not only shows the changes in the instruments of active and passives labour market policies but also analyzes the implications of this change for the political economy, the...

We analyse the effects of public sector sponsored training for the unemployed in the transition process in East Germany. For the microeconometric analysis, we use a new, large and informative administrative database that allows us to use matching methods to reduce potential selection bias,...

Job creation schemes (JCS) have been one important programme of active labour market policy (ALMP) in Germany for a long time. They aim at the re-integration of hard-to-place unemployed into regular employment. A thorough microeconometric evaluation of these programmes was hindered by the fact,...