This book analyses the employment effects of job creation schemes for participating individuals in Germany. Programs provide subsidized jobs that are additional in nature and of value for society. International evidence on their effectiveness suggests that programs should be targeted to the needs of the unemployed and should be offered early in the period of unemployment. Both questions are studied for job creation schemes in Germany.
Education and training are key to explain the current competitive strengths of national economies. While in the past educational and training institutions were often seen as providers of necessary skills for national economies, this view has changed, with education and training now being seen as a key ingredient for international competitiveness. This collection of papers on various aspects of the economics of education and training reflects this new interest.
Measures of Active Labor Market Policy - such as training, wage subsidies, public employment measures, and job search assistance - are widely used in European countries to combat unemployment. This study provides novel insight on this important policy issue by discussing the role of the European Commission's Employment Strategy, reviewing the experiences made in European states, and giving the first ever quantitative assessment of the existing cross-country evidence.
The OECD Employment Outlook 2015 reviews recent labour market trends and short-term prospects in OECD countries, looking at: recent labour market developments, especially around minimum wages; skills and wage inequality; activation policies and inclusive labour markets; and job quality.
This four-volume-set (CCIS 208, 209, 210, 211) constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Symposium on Applied Economics, Business and Development, ISAEBD 2011, held in Dalian, China, in August 2011. The papers address issues related to Applied Economics, Business and Development and cover various research areas including Economics, Management, Education and its Applications.
Social benchmarking is an evaluation method in which the performance levels of different public social programs are compared, either relatively to each other or to an absolute value. The first part of this research discusses the use of social benchmarking for the evaluation of active labour market policies. This part also develops a social benchmark model, which can be used to assess the performance of active labour market policies in general, and work-based employment programs in specific. The second part of this research consists of the actual benchmarking of the work-based employment programs in five countries: Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom
The volume concentrates on «fiscal equalization» in theory, in Poland and in Germany. It starts with an overview on the normative concept of fiscal federalism, emphasizes special problems of fiscal equalization in transition countries, and describes in detail the legal framework and the financial flows of Poland's fiscal equalization system. After a short overview on the «Länder» and the municipal fiscal equalization system in Germany, reforms proposals for the Polish fiscal equalization system are developed.
In January 2005, the German government enacted a substantial reform of the welfare system, the so-called “Hartz IV reform”. This book evaluates key characteristics of the reform from a microeconometric perspective. It investigates whether a centralized or decentralized organization of welfare administration is more successful to integrate welfare recipients into employment. Moreover, it analyzes the employment effects of an intensified use of benefit sanctions and evaluates the effectiveness and efficiency of the most frequently assigned Active Labor Market Programs. The analyses have a focus on immigrants, who are highly over-represented in the German welfare system.
Against the background of political turmoil in the Middle-East, Europe faces an unprecedented surge in asylum applications. In analyzing the economic impact of this inflow, this paper draws from the experience of previous economic migrants and refugees, mindful of the fact that the characteristics of economic migrants can be different from refugees. In the short-run, additional public expenditure will provide a small positive impact on GDP, concentrated in the main destination countries of Germany, Sweden and Austria. Over the longer-term, depending on the speed and success of the integration of refugees in the labor market, the increase in the labor force can have a more lasting impact on growth and the public finances. Here good policies will make an important difference. These include lowering barriers to labor markets for refugees, for example through wage subsidies to employers, and, in particular, reducing legal barriers to labor market participation during asylum process, removing obstacles to entrepreneurship/self-employment, providing job training and job search assistance, as well as language skills. While native workers often have legitimate concerns about the impact of immigrants on wages and employment, past experience indicates that any adverse effects are limited and temporary.
