Deregulating Job Placement in Europe: A Microeconometric Evaluation of an Innovative Voucher Scheme in Germany

22 Pages Posted: 2 Mar 2006 Last revised: 26 Aug 2008

See all articles by Henrik Winterhager

Henrik Winterhager

Center for European Economic Research (ZEW)

Anja Heinze

Center for European Economic Research (ZEW)

Alexander Spermann

Center for European Economic Research (ZEW); Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

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Date Written: February 2006

Abstract

Job placement vouchers can be regarded as a tool to spur competition between public and private job placement activities. The German government launched this instrument in order to end the public placement monopoly and to subsidize its private competitors. We exploit very rich administrative data provided for the first time by the Federal Employment Agency and apply propensity score matching as a method to solve the fundamental evaluation problem and to estimate the effect of the vouchers. We find positive treatment effects on the employment probability after one year of 6.5 percentage points in Western Germany and give a measure for deadweight loss.

Keywords: Job Placement, Active Labor Market Policy, Matching

JEL Classification: J68, H25

Suggested Citation

Winterhager, Henrik and Heinze, Anja and Spermann, Alexander, Deregulating Job Placement in Europe: A Microeconometric Evaluation of an Innovative Voucher Scheme in Germany (February 2006). ZEW - Centre for European Economic Research Discussion Paper No. 06-011, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=887090 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.887090

Henrik Winterhager (Contact Author)

Center for European Economic Research (ZEW) ( email )

P.O. Box 10 34 43
L 7,1 D-68161 Mannheim
Germany

Anja Heinze

Center for European Economic Research (ZEW) ( email )

P.O. Box 10 34 43
L 7,1 D-68161 Mannheim
Germany

Alexander Spermann

Center for European Economic Research (ZEW) ( email )

P.O. Box 10 34 43
L 7,1 D-68161 Mannheim
Germany

Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

Fahnenbergplatz
Freiburg, 79085
Germany

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

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

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