Training the East German Labour Force: Microeconometric Evaluations of Continuous Vocational Training after Unification (Studies in Contemporary Economics)

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. This book presents empirical evaluations of the effects of different types of training programs in East Germany. Chapter 1 presents an overview of labor, the study objectives and results, and discussion of causality and the identification problem in evaluation studies. Chapter 2 examines point estimates of the effects of two types of continuous vocational training--public sector-sponsored training and enterprise-related training--and concludes that, although publicly sponsored training is not associated with any short-term positive effects in the form of increased earnings or reduced unemployment, enterprise-sponsored training has some fairly immediate positive earnings effects but no effect on reducing individual unemployment. Appended to chapter 2 are the following: data, econometrics, specification tests for the partial propensity score, and additional evaluation results. Chapter 3 explores the possibility of obtaining nonparametric bounds for training effects without knowledge of the participation process and concludes that it not possible. Appended to chapter 3 are the following: econometrics, results for on-the-job versus off-the-job training, and additional results for on-the-job training versus no training (for women only). Technical problems that should be addressed in future research are considered in chapter 4. The book contains 110 references and 102 tables/figures. (MN)

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.

Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction....Pages 1-18 Estimates of the Effects of Training....Pages 19-131 Bounds for the Effects of Training....Pages 132-189 Conclusions and Outlook....Pages 190-194 References....Pages 195-204 Back Matter....Pages 205-206