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

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  • Winterhager, Henrik

    (ZEW Mannheim)

  • Heinze, Anja

    (ZEW Mannheim)

  • Spermann, Alexander

    (University of Freiburg)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Winterhager, Henrik & Heinze, Anja & Spermann, Alexander, 2006. "Deregulating Job Placement in Europe: A Microeconometric Evaluation of an Innovative Voucher Scheme in Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 2109, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2109
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    matching; job placement; Active Labor Market Policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J68 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Public Policy
    • H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies

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