Ökonometrie vs. Projektdesign: Lehren aus der Evaluation eines Modellprojekts zur Umsetzung des Workfare-Konzepts

Hilmar Schneider (), Arne Uhlendorff and Klaus Zimmermann ()

Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), 2013, vol. 233, issue 1, 65-85

Abstract: A common problem of welfare states consists of a high unemployment risk for low-skilled workers. This is often attributed to a lack of jobs for the low-skilled, but it may as well be caused by a lack of incentives to work. Low-skilled workers are easily substitutable and therefore have little bargaining power. Hence, they are typically dependent on low-paid jobs. This may create disincentives towork, if the achievable marketwage does not sufficiently exceed the welfare level. Workfare could be an efficient strategy to overcome such disincentives by introducing a work requirement for unemployed welfare recipients. In our paper we investigate the importance of such a supply side policy.We evaluate a pilot workfare project of a Berlin city community to integrate young people in social assistance into the labor market. Reference data are generated in collaboration with the German Employment Office. The participation effect is found to be positive and of relevant size, but not statistically significant. This indicates that selection biases detected in the allocation process of individuals to the program can be adjusted by econometric techniques, but only at the prize of reduced significance levels. Given the small sample sizes of pilot projects this calls for social experiments in controlled project designs.

Keywords: Workfare; labor supply; evaluation; social experiments; Workfare; labor supply; evaluation; social experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/jbnst-2013-0106 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Ökonometrie vs. Projektdesign: Lehren aus der Evaluation eines Modellprojekts zur Umsetzung des Workfare-Konzepts (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jns:jbstat:v:233:y:2013:i:1:p:65-85

DOI: 10.1515/jbnst-2013-0106

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik) is currently edited by Peter Winker

More articles in Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik) from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().