Empirical evaluation of selected labour market and education policies ; Empirische Evaluation ausgewählter Aspekte der Arbeitsmarkt- und Bildungspolitik

Abstract

Gesamtdissertation ; This thesis consists of three independent chapters, which are briefly summarised in the following paragraphs: There are two active labour market programmes in Germany that support the entry into self-employment of formerly unemployed individuals. I examine the sustainability of self-employment supported through either programme separately by drawing on a unique data set that combines register data from the German Federal Employment Agency with interviews of programme participants. I apply discrete time duration rate models allowing for unobserved heterogeneity. Both programmes appear to be very successful, with about 80 percent of participants in either programme still self-employed more than 1.5 years after their establishment. The sustainability of supported self-employment is very similar in both programs. It is widely believed that the easiest way to improve educational quality would be to reduce class size. I analyse the effect that class size reduction may have on early career earnings by exploring cross regional and longitudinal variation in class size. Drawing on regional data from the German Socio- Economic Panel Study (SOEP), I find the effect to be neither statistically significant nor to be discernible with respect to the point estimate. The presented findings, which are robust to various changes in specification, may have important policy implications on the ongoing debate on how to improve education in Germany and elsewhere. Students from low-income families are eligible to student aid under the federal students' financial assistance scheme (BAfoeG) in Germany. We evaluate the effectiveness of a recent reform of student aid that substantially increased the amount received by eligible students to raise enrolment rates into tertiary education. We view this reform as a 'natural experiment' and apply the difference-in-difference methodology using a discrete-time hazard rate model to estimate the causal effect on enrolment rates into higher education. We find that the reform had a ...