Evaluating the employment effects of public sector sponsored training in Germany

In West Germany public sector sponsored training has been regulated since 1969 by the Work Support Act. From then onwards high and almost yearly increasing amounts of public resources have been invested into subsidizing training programs by the Federal Labour Office. After the reunification in 1990, due the large effects of the transformation process on the labor market, public sector sponsored training played an even more important role in the eastern part of Germany. This study evaluates seperately the effects of public sector sponsored training on indiviual employment performance in West and East Germany. Thereby it addresses thorougly the sample selection problem, that is the issue to construct an adequate control group for the group of training participants.