1 Deregulating Job Placement in Europe: A Microeconometric Evaluation of an Innovative Voucher Scheme in Germany

Job placement vouchers may be interpreted as a further step to shift job placement to the private sector. The government launched this innovative instrument urging the former public placement monopolist to subsidize his private competitors. We exploit very rich administrative data provided for the first time by the Federal Employment Agency to apply propensity score matching as a method to solve the fundamental evaluation problem. We find positive treatment effects on the integration into employment between 3.7 percentage points in West Germany and 4.8 percentage points in East Germany and higher deadweight effects in East Germany than in West Germany. JEL Classification: J 68, H 2