Vouchers and Caseworkers in Public Training Programs: Evidence from the Hartz Reform in Germany

51 Pages Posted: 19 Jan 2009 Last revised: 19 May 2022

See all articles by Ulf Rinne

Ulf Rinne

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Arne Uhlendorff

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Zhong Zhao

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); Renmin University of China

Abstract

This paper studies the role of training vouchers and caseworkers in public training programs. Using a rich administrative data set, we apply matching and regression methods to measure the effect of the Hartz reform in Germany, which introduced training vouchers and imposed more selective criteria on participants. Besides estimating the overall reform effect, we isolate the effect induced by changes in the composition of program participants due to stricter selection by the caseworkers (selection effect) from the effect based on the introduction of vouchers (voucher effect). Analyzing the most important type of training in Germany, we find a slightly positive impact of the reform. Our decomposition results suggest that the selection effect is ? if at all ? slightly negative, and that the voucher effect increased both, the employment probability and earnings of the participants.

Keywords: program evaluation, active labor market policy, training, Hartz reform, caseworker, matching, voucher

JEL Classification: J64, J68, H43

Suggested Citation

Rinne, Ulf and Uhlendorff, Arne and Zhao, Zhong, Vouchers and Caseworkers in Public Training Programs: Evidence from the Hartz Reform in Germany. IZA Discussion Paper No. 3910, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1329548

Ulf Rinne (Contact Author)

IZA Institute of Labor Economics ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.iza.org/profile?key=1844

Arne Uhlendorff

IZA Institute of Labor Economics ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Zhong Zhao

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Renmin University of China ( email )

Room B906
Xianjin Building
Beijing, Beijing 100872
China

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