Employment effects of the provision of specific professional skills and techniques in Germany

Abstract

Auch mit seiner neuen Reihe "IAB-Discussion Paper" will das Forschungsinstitut der Bundesagentur für Arbeit den Dialog mit der externen Wissenschaft intensivieren. Durch die rasche Verbreitung von Forschungsergebnissen über das Internet soll noch vor Drucklegung Kritik angeregt und Qualität gesichert werden.Also with its new series "IAB Discussion Paper" the research institute of the German Federal Employment Agency wants to intensify dialogue with external science. By the rapid spreading of research results via Internet still before printing criticism shall be stimulated and quality shall be ensured. Abstract: Based on unique administrative data, which has only recently become available, this paper estimates the employment effects of the most important type of public sector sponsored training in Germany, namely the provision of specific professional skills and techniques (SPST). Using the inflows into unemployment for the year 1993, the empirical analysis uses local linear matching based on the estimated propensity score to estimate the average treatment effect on the treated of SPST programs starting during 1 to 6, 7 to 12, and 13 to 24 months of unemployment.The empirical results show a negative lock-in effect for the period right after the beginning of the program and significantly positive treatment effects on employment rates of about 10 percentage points and above a year after the beginning of the program. The general pattern of the estimated treatment effects is quite similar for the three time intervals of elapsed unemployment considered. The positive effects tend to persist almost completely until the end of our evaluation period. The positive effects are stronger in West Germany compared to East Germany.

The Curse and Blessing of Training the Unemployed in a Changing Economy: The Case of East Germany After Unification

“…Because of the short time horizon available to observe outcomes, the negative lock‐in effects drive their results. Fitzenberger and Speckesser (2005) and Speckesser (2004) draw their sample from the same administrative records, as we do. However, they restrict their analysis to one special type of government‐sponsored training and observe outcomes for 36 months after the beginning of the programme only, compared with 96 months in this study.…”

“…Speckesser (2004), who focuses on training conducted in the period 1993–94, finds no significant effects thereafter, mainly because of rapidly decreasing sample size towards the end of his observation period. Fitzenberger and Speckesser (2005), who cover a longer period of programme participation (1990–97), obtain positive employment effects of about 5–10% points about 20 months after the programme start.…”

Literature analysis of the evaluation of public training programmes in the USA, Europe and China: Implications for the evaluation of farmer training programmes in China

“…The findings of Schochet et al () for the USA, Larsson () for Sweden, Bergemann et al (), Lechner et al () and Fitzenberger and Völter () for East Germany, Jespersen et al () for Denmark, Fitzenberger and Speckesser () and Rinne et al () for Germany, and Card et al () for European countries showed a dynamic training effect with significant variation over time after the implementation of training programmes. Usually, the employment or earnings effects were nonsignificant, zero or negative initially, but then became positive in the medium to long run.…”

“…With respect to distance, 2 studies with regional variables demonstrated a significant relationship between distance to nearest market, industrial areas, county, town or city and training outcomes (especially for earnings and the probability of technology adoption) (Ning & Wu, ; Wu et al, ). For geographical divisions, positive effects were stronger in West Germany compared to East Germany (Fitzenberger & Speckesser, ; Rinne et al, ). There was also a disparity in unemployment rates between the German‐speaking cantons and the non‐German‐speaking cantons in a Swiss study (3.4% vs 7.1% in 1995) (Gerfin & Lechner, ).…”

“…In the 1990s, many European countries designed and implemented training programmes as subprogrammes of active labour market policy. Similarly, European empirical studies evaluated the effectiveness of training programmes in the short term and the long term (Fitzenberger & Speckesser, ; Hujer, Thomsen, & Zeiss, ; Jespersen, Munch, & Skipper, ; Larsson, ; Lechner, Miquel, & Wunsch, ; Lechner, Miquel, & Wunsch, ; Sianesi, ), and the heterogeneous effects across different demographic groups (Fitzenberger & Speckesser, ; Gerfin & Lechner, ; Raaum & Torp, ; Regnér, ; Speckesser, ). In addition, some studies found that different training courses have different training effects (Fitzenberger & Völter, ; Gerfin & Lechner, ; Jespersen et al, ; Larsson, ).…”