Performance of Active Labour Market Policy in Germany
17
Furthermore, the report studies the outsourcing of placement services by com-
paring clients who have made use of external placement services to clients
who have remained under the public employment service. External placement
services can be utilised either by the client himself, using a placement voucher,
or by the public employment service who can assign clients to external pro-
viders. Selection is controlled for by performing a combination of exact
matching with propensity score matching. The analysis is based on adminis-
trative data which is supplemented by survey data from telephone interviews
for a sub-sample. For placement vouchers, the results fail to find any sig-
nificant effect on the prospect of entering employment. It appears that many
clients who had received placement vouchers did not actually use them. In
East Germany, those who found a job using a placement voucher remain in
employment for a significantly shorter period than those who did not use
placement vouchers. The assignment of clients to private placement providers
by the public employment service also does not show significant effects.
Finally, the assignment to PSA produces significant locking-in effects that
delay the integration of workers into regular, non-PSA employment.
Training Measures
Training measures have been evaluated by numerous studies. Since studies
mostly focus on either East or West Germany, we will present results for each
region separately. Early evaluation studies on training in East Germany
include Lechner (1998, 1999, 2000), Hujer/Wellner (2000), which are based on
the GSOEP. Studies based on the Labour Market Monitor East include
Hübler (1997) and Fitzenberger/Prey (1998). Bergemann et al. (2000) use the
Labour Market Monitor East of the federal state Saxony-Anhalt, as do
Bergemann et al. (2004). Reinowski et al. (2003, 2004) use the Mikrozensus
Saxony. Recent studies based on merged administrative data are Hujer et al.
(2004a), Fitzenberger/Speckesser (2005), Lechner et al. (2005).
Many of the early studies either find positive effects or are unable to find any
significant effects of training programmes in East Germany. An exception is
Hübler (1997) who finds negative effects for women. This result contrasts with
the finding of Bergemann et al. (2000) of significantly positive effects of
second treatments for women only. Bergemann et al. (2004) find positive
effects in the early 1990s and negative effects in later years. In general, studies
published from 2000 onwards tend to be more pessimistic. Besides Bergemann
et al. (2004), also Lechner (2000) and Reinowski et al. (2003) find negative
effects of training participation. By and large, the results are mixed and it is
rather unclear what lesson can be drawn from these studies on the
programmes’ effectiveness.
Recent studies based on better administrative data seem to derive more con-
sistent results. Hujer et al. (2004a) use data from the period 1999-2002 and