Joachim Wolff

• Ph D
• Head of Department at Institute for Employment Research

This paper analyses effects of subsidised, predominantly non-standard, employment within the German labour market programme ‘participation in the labour market’ for long-term welfare recipients on their health satisfaction, health-based quality of life, satisfaction with standard of living and households' actual ownership of important goods (e.g.,...

While many studies estimate the effects of active labor market programs (ALMPs) on the participants’ labor market outcomes, far fewer studies are concerned with the effects of these policies on the regional job-matching process. We analyze which ALMPs are particularly effective at the regional level, as well as the role local labor market condition...

The reintegration of young welfare recipients into the labour market is a major policy objective in many European countries. In this context, monitoring and sanctions are commonly used policy tools. We analyse the impact of strict sanctions for young welfare recipients whose institutional setting features sanctions for non‐compliance with job‐searc...

We investigate the effectiveness of three different job-search and training programmes for German long-term unemployed persons. On the basis of an extensive administrative data set, we evaluated the effects of those programmes on various levels of aggregation using Causal Machine Learning. We found participants to benefit from the investigated prog...

Matching-type estimators using the propensity score are the major workhorse in active labour market policy evaluation. This work investigates if machine learning algorithms for estimating the propensity score lead to more credible estimation of average treatment effects on the treated using a radius matching framework. Considering two popular metho...

Active labour market programmes are expected to be quite effective if job centres have a substantial degree of freedom to deliver tailor‐made individual services. For Germany, we studied the effectiveness of Schemes for Activation and Integration (SAI), which were introduced in 2009 to grant such freedoms to implement short training and private pla...

Matching-type estimators using the propensity score are the major workhorse in active labour market policy evaluation. This work investigates if machine learning algorithms for estimating the propensity score lead to more credible estimation of average treatment effects on the treated using a radius matching framework. Considering two popular metho...

Abstract The German workfare scheme ‘One-Euro-Jobs’, which provides additional jobs of public interest for welfare recipients, has a number of different goals. On the one hand, One-Euro-Jobs are intended to increase the participants’ employment prospects in the medium term. On the other hand, they can be used to test welfare recipients’ willingness...

We discuss a new scheme of subsidized jobs for unemployed people with extremely low job finding prospects. This scheme, referred to as Social Labour Market, primarily intends to promote their social inclusion. Research on public employment schemes has shown that it is of utmost importance to define very narrow criteria for participation in order to...

While many studies estimated the effects of active labour market programmes (ALMPs) on the participants’ labour market outcomes, much fewer studies are concerned with effects of these policies on the regional matching-process between job seekers and vacancies. An essential part of many reforms of the unemployment benefit system such as in Germany i...

Mit den Maßnahmen zur Aktivierung und beruflichen Eingliederung (MAbE) werden Kursteilnahmen und die Einschaltung privater Arbeitsvermittlungen ebenso wie das Sammeln praktischer Kenntnisse im Betrieb gefördert, um die Eingliederung der Teilnehmenden in den Arbeitsmarkt zu unterstützen. Wir untersuchen, ob MAbE-Teilnahmen die Eingliederungschanc...

The article is concerned with the question whether active labor market programs effectively improve the employment prospects of young participants in different family contexts. If the transition to employment overlaps with partnership and family formation during young adulthood, unemployed men and women have to arrange their family commitments with...

ALG-II-Bezieher sind verpflichtet, gegenüber den Jobcentern ein kooperatives Verhalten zu zeigen und sich um eine Arbeit oder Ausbildung zu bemühen. Kommen sie diesen Pflichten nicht nach, sieht das Gesetz Sanktionen vor, die für junge ALG-II-Bezieher besonders strikt sind. Die Autoren untersuchen in der vorliegenden Studie die Wirkungen erster und...

In this Statement, the IAB is commenting on the draft of the ruling coalition of the CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union) and the SPD (Social Democratic Party) concerning an integration law (printed parliamentary document 18/8615) as well as on the motion "Supporting refugees in finding work, promoting integration and combatt...

Zusammenfassung Im Sozialgesetzbuch (SGB) II geregelte Pflichten und Sanktionen wegenPflichtverletzungen sollen das aktive Bemühen um die Überwindung des Leistungsbezuges und die Kooperation der Arbeitslosengeld-II-Bezieher mit den Jobcentern sicherstellen. Während einer sanktionsbedingten Leistungskürzung leben die Betroffenen unterhalb des soziok...

In this study, we examined the long-term effects of supporting welfare recipients by means of a subsidy to start their own business. We used administrative data and propensity score matching to estimate the impact of the subsidy on the probability of receiving welfare benefits and on unemployment status up to 72 months after programme start. We sup...

The German workfare programme ‘One-Euro-Jobs’ can be used for different goals. On the one hand, they aim at improving employment prospects of long-term jobless welfare recipients. On the other hand, they can also be used to test the willingness to work of welfare recipients. Based on data from the panel study ‘Labour Market and Social Security’ and...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of workfare programme participation on self-efficacy, because many studies suggest that sufficient self-efficacy is essential for successful job search in modern labour markets. Design/methodology/approach – The paper analyses an exemplary German workfare programme’ the so-called “One-Eu...

Der Beitrag thematisiert die Frage, wie Beratung und Vermittlung von Arbeitslosen in Deutschland funktionieren und wie wirksam sie sind. Dazu betrachten wir Ergebnisse verschiedener empirischer Studien, die sich mit dem konkreten Vermittlungsprozess befassen. So zeigt sich beispielsweise, dass Modellprojekte mit einem besseren Betreuungsschlüssel z...

In this Statement the IAB is commenting on the motion of the parliamentary party Die Piraten (The Pirate Party) of the North Rhine-Westphalian Parliament which urges that the sanctions connected to unemployment benefit II (sanctions against welfare recipients) be suspended (parliamentary printed document 16/4162). The motion argues that there is no...

Social welfare systems usually imply specific obligations for benefit recipients. If a recipient does not comply with these obligations, a sanction involving a punitive benefits reduction may be imposed. We give an overview of the literature on the effects of sanctions in social welfare systems and present first results on sanction effects for youn...

This review discusses empirical studies on hiring subsidies in the private sector and on schemes directly providing usually public or non-profit sector jobs for the unemployed in Germany. An important effect of hiring subsidies is that they stabilise employment. For employment schemes, results before the Hartz reforms imply mostly negative average...

In January 2005 the Social Code Book II came into effect in Germany. It introduced the new unemployment benefit II (Arbeitslosengeld II) as a major element and final stage of a series of labour market reforms termed the Hartz reforms which aimed at flexibilization of the German labour market and granted (re)integration of persons in need into the l...

Social welfare systems usually imply specific obligations for benefit recipients. If a recipient does not comply with these obligations, a sanction involving a punitive benefits reduction may be imposed. In this paper we give an overview of the literature on the effects of sanctions in social welfare systems and we present first results on the effe...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the implementation and effectiveness of an intensified activation scheme for very disadvantaged welfare recipients in Germany, used as a targeting device for a very generous wage subsidy (JobPerspective). Design/methodology/approach – Using administrative data and a difference-in-difference approa...

Der Forschungsbericht präsentiert Ergebnisse einer qualitativen Implementationsstudie zum Umgang mit dem Einstiegsgeld (ESG) in der Gründungsvariante in den Grundsicherungsstellen. Rein deskriptiv betrachtet hat die Zahl der Förderungen mit Einstiegsgeld auf insgesamt geringem Niveau nach der Einführung im Jahr 2005 zunächst einen kleinen Boom erle...

We studied the effect of participation in a new business start-up scheme for needy unemployed people in Germany. The programme was introduced at the beginning of the year 2005 together with a new means-tested benefit system. The aim of the programme was to promote entrepreneurial activities among unemployed people. On the level of society such a pr...

"Welfare recipients who without good cause do not cooperate with their job centre or who do not sufficiently search for jobs or training might face a temporary benefit sanction. This study describes first the institutional set-up of sanctions against welfare benefit recipients in Germany and its changes since the introduction of the Social Code II...

Für junge Arbeitslose mit unterschiedlichen familiären Bindungen wird untersucht, inwieweit die Teilnahme an einer Fördermaßnahme ihre Arbeitsmarktchancen erhöht: Sind Teilnehmer an betrieblichen und schulischen Trainingsmaßnahmen so wie an Ein­Euro­Jobs nach zweieinhalb Jahren häufiger in regulärer Beschäftigung als vergleichbare ungeförderte Pers...

Der Beitrag gibt einen ergebnisorientierten Überblick über den Stand der Evaluation der aktiven Arbeitsmarktpolitik in Deutschland. Die Befunde weisen überwiegend darauf hin, dass die meisten Maßnahmen bzw. Instrumente (als solche werden Maßnahmen bezeichnet, die auf der Grundlage einer gesetzlichen Normierung erbracht werden), die Beschäftigungsch...

In Germany, due to special rules, 15-to 24-year-old welfare recipients registered with the Public Employment Service, are highly targeted by mandatory activation policies. This paper investigates the effects of the special rules in terms of enhancing the (re-)employment probability, increasing earnings and reducing benefit dependency of targeted pe...

"This article provides a result-oriented view on the current status of German active labor market policy evaluation. The literature shows that nearly all groups of instruments positively affect the labor market prospects of at least particular groups of participants. However, regarding the selection of program participants there is considerable roo...

Vocational training programmes that are funded by the Public Employment Service aim to improve the employment prospects of participants and provide workers with qualifications that meet the needs of the organizations and the economy. This article summarizes the empirical evidence for Germany on active labour market programmes that provide further t...

Hohmeyer K, Wolff J. A fistful of euros: is the German one-euro job workfare scheme effective for participants? Welfare reforms have constituted a major policy issue in many OECD countries in recent decades. In Germany, a major reform in 2005 emphasised the activation of welfare recipients and introduced a workfare programme –‘One-Euro Jobs’– on a...

Mit den Leistungen zur Beschäftigungsförderung nach § 16e SGB II ("Beschäftigungszuschuss") wurde dem Maßnahmenkatalog des SGB II zum 01. Oktober 2007 ein zusätzliches Instrument für langzeitarbeitslose erwerbsfähige Leistungsberechtigte mit mehreren Vermittlungshemmnissen hinzugefügt. Im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums für Arbeit und Soziales hat d...

"In seiner Stellungnahme äußert sich das IAB zunächst zu dem Antrag 'Rechte der Arbeitsuchenden stärken - Sanktionen aussetzen' der Bundestagsfraktion Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (Bundestagsdrucksache 17/3207). Er sieht vor, durch eine Reihe von Maßnahmen die Eigeninitiative der Arbeitsuchenden zu fördern, die Möglichkeiten zur Selbstbestimmung der Arbei...

The authors analyze the effect of participation in short-term training measures on older German recipients of means-tested unemployment benefits. Their analysis uses administrative data of the German Federal Employment Agency, and they estimate the effects of participating in two types of short-term training--classroom and in-firm training--on diff...

Bringing welfare recipients into jobs is a major goal of a German labour market policy reform in the year 2005. To achieve this goal major emphasis was given to job creation schemes which provide participants with temporary subsidized jobs mainly in the non-profit sector and which differ only with respect to a few features. We study and compare the...

"This study regards the implementation of a new start-up subsidy (Gründungszuschuss) for unemployment insurance (UI) benefit recipients in Germany. With its introduction five years ago the new programme replaced two distinct programmes (Ich-AG, Überbrückungsgeld) that promoted transitions from unemployment into self-employment. Since then little ha...

Der Gründungszuschuss hat im August 2006 die Vorgängerinstrumente Überbrückungsgeld und Existenzgründungszuschuss (Ich-AG) abgelöst. Seither hat die Gründungsförderung von ALG-I-Beziehern zahlenmäßig nicht an Bedeutung verloren. Sie soll Arbeitslosen einen erfolgreichen Übergang in die Selbstständigkeit ermöglichen oder erleichtern. Für eine Implem...

"Business start-up schemes for the unemployed have been the focus of much research in recent years. However, not much is known about self-employment programs directed specifically towards welfare benefit recipients. For this latter group, a program granting start-up subsidies for up to 24 months was introduced in Germany in 2005, along with the imp...

Mit der Einführung des Sozialgesetzbuches II im Jahr 2005 haben öffentlich geförderte Zusatzjobs ("Ein-Euro-Jobs") mit teils mehr als 700.000 Förderungen pro Jahr eine herausragende Bedeutung gewonnen. Insbesondere Hilfebedürftige zwischen 15 und 24 Jahren werden überproportional häufig in Zusatzjobs vermittelt. Das Ziel besteht in ihrer Heranführu...

Ein-Euro-Jobs sollen vorwiegend Arbeits-losengeld-II-Bezieher mit besonderen Ein gliederungsproblemen an den Arbeits-markt heranführen. Neue Ergebnisse zei-gen, dass dies in der Regel und im Schnitt mittelfristig auch gelingt. Allerdings sind die Effekte auf die Beschäftigungsaus-sichten nicht sehr hoch. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht für die Ei...

Der Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über die arbeitsmarktpolitischen Maßnahmen, die darauf abzielen, die Situation auf dem Arbeitsmarkt zu verbessern und untersucht, ob diese 'Reform der Reformen' in die richtige Richtung läuft und welche Perspektive sie älteren Arbeitnehmern bietet. Die gesetzlichen Neuregelungen umfassen vier Aspekte: Verlängerung d...

Ein-Euro-Jobs haben sich seit ihrer Einführung im Jahr 2005 zur quantitativ bedeutendsten Maßnahme der aktiven Arbeitsmarktpolitik im SGB II entwickelt. 2007 wurden mehr als 750.000 neue Förderungen begonnen. Ziel von Ein-Euro-Jobs ist es, die Beschäftigungsfähigkeit der Teilnehmer zu erhöhen. Sie können aber auch zur Überprüfung der Arbeitsbereits...

This paper uses a natural experiment approach to identify the effects of an exogenouschange in future pension benefits on workers’ training participation. We use uniquematched survey and administrative data for male employees in the Dutch public sectorwho were born in 1949 or 1950. Only the latter were subject to a major pension reformthat diminish...

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of unobserved heterogeneity in structural discrete choice models of labour supply for the evaluation of tax-reforms. Within this framework, unobserved heterogeneity has been estimated either parametrically or nonparametrically through random co- efficient models. Nevertheless, the estimation of such mode...

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of unobserved heterogeneity in structural discrete choice models of labour supply for the evaluation of tax-reforms. Within this framework, unobserved heterogeneity has been estimated either parametrically or nonparametrically through random co- efficient models. Nevertheless, the estimation of such mode...

We study the impact of employment quota on firms' demand for disabled workers. The Austrian Disabled Persons Employment Act (DPEA) requires firms to provide at least one job to a disabled worker per 25 non-disabled workers, a rule which is strictly enforced by non-compliance taxation. We find that, as a result of the discontinuous nature of the non...

"This paper studies individual log real wage change of east and west Germans over the period 1990/91 to 1995/96 using data from the German Socio-economic Panel. Parameters are estimated by median regression. Human capital theory and job mobility theories have implications for wage changes that differ between a transition and a non-transition econom...

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of unobserved heterogeneity in structural discrete choice models of labour supply for the evaluation of tax-reforms. Within this framework, unobserved heterogeneity has been estimated either parametrically or nonparametrically through random co- efficient models. Nevertheless, the estimation of such mode...

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of unobserved heterogeneity in structural discrete choice models of labour supply for the evaluation of tax-reforms. Within this framework, unobserved heterogeneity has been estimated either parametrically or nonparametrically through random co- efficient models. Nevertheless, the estimation of such mode...

Migranten der zweiten Generation sprechen viel häufiger Deutsch im eigenen Haushalt als Migranten der ersten Generation. Erwerbslose Personen, die zu Hause vor allem Deutsch sprechen, suchen intensiver nach Arbeit. Deutschkenntnisse spielen auch eine Rolle dabei, wie häufig bestimmte Wege der Arbeitsuche eingeschlagen werden. Je besser die Sprachke...

At the start of the year 2005 the Social Code II came into force in Germany. The reform introduced a unified means-tested benefit, the unemployment benefit II, for employable people who live in needy households. Prior to this reform they could have either received unemployment assistance benefit or (with little or no employment history) social bene...

"Die als Ein-Euro-Jobs bekannten Zusatzjobs haben im Rahmen des Sozialgesetzbuches II die Aufgabe, erwerbsf�hige, bed�rftige Personen, die anderenfalls keine Arbeit finden, wieder an den Arbeitsmarkt heranzuf�hren. Ferner dienen sie als ein Test auf Arbeitsbereitschaft ('Work-Test'), also zur Feststellung, ob Personen tats�chlich dem Arbeitsmarkt z...

"Arbeitsgelegenheiten in der Entgeltvariante stehen seit Einf�hrung des SGB II im Jahre 2005 als ein Instrument zur Verf�gung, mit dem die Besch�ftigungsf�higkeit arbeitsloser Bezieher von ALG II erh�ht werden soll. Im ersten Jahr wurden �ber 25.000 Hilfebed�rftige durch dieses Instrument gef�rdert. Wir betrachten in dem Beitrag, wie Arbeitsgelegen...

"Mit der Einführung des Sozialgesetzbuches (SGB) II wurde das Einstiegsgeld (§ 29 SGB II) geschaffen. Durch dieses Instrument können arbeitslose erwerbsfähige Hilfebedürftige bei der Aufnahme einer sozialversicherungspflichtigen Beschäftigung oder selbständigen Tätigkeit zum Vollerwerb finanziell unterstützt werden. Der Bericht befasst sich mit der...

"At the start of the year 2005 the Social Code II came into force in Germany. The reform introduced a unified means-tested benefit, the unemployment benefit II, for employable people who live in needy households. Prior to this reform they could have either received unemployment assistance benefit or (with little or no employment history) social ben...

We demonstrate that non-monotone behaviour of the right tail of earnings density may lead to the fact that nonparametric estimation of the Bontemps et al. (2000) equilibrium search model with employer heterogeneity does not yield consistent estimates. We propose an easy way of checking whether the Bontemps et al. (2000) estimation procedure can be...

In this paper we investigate whether the extension of the entitlement to unemployment benefits in the mid 80s can explain the increase in the unemployment rates of unskilled and elder workers in western Germany. To answer this question we estimate a version of the Burdett-Mortensen search equilibrium model and analyze how workers’ search behaviour...

Retrospectively collected duration data are often reported incorrectly. An important type of such an error is heaping—respondents tend to round-off or round-up the data according to some rule of thumb. For two special cases of the Weibull model we study the behaviour of the ‘naive estimators’, which simply ignore the measurement error due to heapin...

This paper analyses how quickly old job matches ceased to exist during the East German transition process from July 1990 to December 1993. Using job spells from the German Socio-Economic Panel-East, we estimate the effects of important covariates on the transition rates from the old job to a new one and into unemployment by a competing-risks durati...

This paper studies the impact of unemployment benefits on unemployment duration for East Germany using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. It concentrates on exit from unemployment into employment. Estimation results of a discrete-time hazard rate model imply that moderate cuts in the replacement rate raise the hazards by little. The effect...

This paper analyses the consequences of heaping in duration models. Heaping is a specific form of response error typical to retrospectively collected labor force status data. Respondents round-off the spell length, when duration data is collected by episode-based questionnaires. Calendar-based questionnaires instead may lead to abnormal concentrati...

In this paper, we analyze unemployment duration in Germany with official data from the German Federal Employment Office for the years 1980-1995. Conventional hazard rate models for leaving unemployment cannot cope with simultaneous and flexible fitting of duration dependence, nonlinear covariate effects, trend and seasonal calendar time components...

This paper analyses the impact of the Hungarian unemployment insurance (UI) benefit system on the speed of exit from unemployment to regular employment. The duration analysis relies on unemployment spells from two inflow cohorts, which are administered under distinct UI rules. Thus, it exploits a natural experiment to identify disincentive effects....

This paper analyses the impact of the Hungarian unemployment insurance (UI) benefit system on the speed of exit from unemployment to regular employment. The duration analysis relies on unemployment spells from two inflow cohorts, which are administered under distinct UI rules. Thus, it exploits a natural experiment to identify disincentive effects....

This paper analyses the Hungarian unemployment insurance (Ul) benefit reform of 1993, which led to the creation of a less generous benefit system. We investigate a sample of unemployment spells which are drawn from the Hungarian Ul register directly before and after the reform came into force. The focus of the microeconometric duration analysis lie...