The Role of Volunteers in German Refugee Crisis and their Contribution to the Local Government Expenditure

Chang Woon Nam and Peter Steinhoff

No 7352, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This study deals with a specific volunteering aspect revealed in the German refugee crisis 2015/16. German federalism prescribing interjurisdictional assignments of tasks for designing, financing and implementing services for refugees and their geographic distribution have made municipalities and cities primarily responsible for solving problems of refugees’ accommodation, integration and health care. Based on a survey recently carried out in the district of Erding, it firstly demonstrates distinctive characteristics of the individual volunteers engaged in such related local activities (gender and age; income structure; donation types; working hours), followed by an attempt to measure economic values of volunteering. Despite some methodological weaknesses, this study highlights the monetary significance of volunteers’ hidden contribution to overcoming the crisis and the relatively huge scope of possible savings in local expenditure, compared to an assumed situation if such voluntary activities were fully substituted by those of full-time civil servants.

Keywords: volunteer activity; German refugee crisis; economic value of volunteering; local government expenditure; district of Erding (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D64 D91 E65 H72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The Role of Volunteers in German Refugee Crisis and Their Contribution to Local Government Expenditure (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7352

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