addition, the recruited vacancies should be passed on to the contact persons of the long-term
unemployed in order to improve the matching of unemployed workers to vacant jobs.
7. Conclusions
Using a policy experiment in Germany we find that merging local public employment
services and social benefit administrations has the potential to improve the job finding
probability of the long-term unemployed. Furthermore, the fact that the organisational
features implemented primarily by Approved Local Providers are positively correlated with
the job finding probability of the long-term unemployed indicates that regions that self-
selected into Approved Local Providers seem to have implemented a better organisational
structure. However, the relatively poor performance of Approved Local Providers compared
to Joint Local Agencies suggests that Approved Local Providers did underestimate the
positive effect that a merger between the local public employment service and the local
social benefit administration has on the job finding rate of the long-term unemployed.
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