Training the East German Labour Force

After unification the public and private sector spent large amounts of money to retrain the East Germany labour force in order to ease the transition to the new market economy. Using individual longitudinal and cross sectional data, this book proposes microeconometric methods to evaluate the impact of these training programmes on the participants'situation in the labour market. The contributions concern the issue of how such evaluations could and should be performed as well as the effectiveness of the actual programmes. The empirical findings should be performed as well as the effectiveness of the actual programmes. The empirical findings suggest that the public sector sponsored training programmes were fairly ineffective for the individual participants with respect to their unemployment risk as well as other labour market indicators. In contrast, the trainig organized and paid by the enterpries caused considerable earnings growth.

Texte du rabat

After unification large amounts of money were spent to retrain the East Germany labour force in order to ease the transition to the new market economy. This book uses microeconometric methods and individual data to evaluate the impact of these training programmes on the participants' labour market situation. It discusses the appropriate evaluation methodology as well as the effectiveness of the actual programmes for the individual participants. The empirical results suggest that the public sector sponsored training programmes were fairly ineffective. In contrast, the training organized and paid by the enterprises caused considerable earnings growings.

Contenu

Introduction: About the Topic; Labour Markets in East Germany after Unification; Contents and Summary of the Results; Causality and the Identification Problem in Evaluation.- Estimates of the Effects of Training: Public-Sector Sponsored Training; Enterprise-Related Training.- Bounds for the Effects of Training: Introduction; Identification of the Causal Effects of Training; Data; Estimation of the Bounds on the Causal Effects of Training; Results; Conclusion and Outlook.- Conclusions and Outlook.- References.