The Effectiveness of Qualification Measures for Employed Workers – An Evaluation Study for Saxony

This paper investigates whether and to what extent employment policy measures (co-) financed by the European Social Fund in Germany meet their objective. Specifically, it is analyzed whether qualification programs for employed workers in the German state of Saxony were effective in terms of employment protection.To this end, a control function approach is implemented which utilizes a unique firm-level dataset. This model explicitly accounts for unobserved heterogeneity between participating and non-participating companies by modeling the participation decision process. Our results suggest a positive effect of program participation. However, this positive treatment effect varies considerably across different sub-groups of the treatment as well as the comparison group.Employment Policy, European Social Fund, Firm-Level Data

The Impact of Economic Integration on Employment – An Assessment in the Context of EU-Enlargement

This paper is motivated by the idea that the enlargement of the European Union is only one part of an overall process, known as economic integration, which characterizes the involvement of European economies into the global division of labor. Therefore, the paper aims at providing a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the impact of economic integration on employment and labor market dynamics in current EU-member and candidate countries. The ultimate aim of this analysis is the provision of forecasts for future labor market developments in the context of EU-enlargement. To this end, we investigate this nexus not only on an economy-wide level, but analyze whether the impact of integration varies for different sectors (automotive and financial services) of the economy. The estimation results suggest that future integration processes lead to an increase of economy-wide employment in the accession countries and a small, if any, rise in this outcome variable in the current EU-countries. Moreover, it could be expected that unemployment rates in the accession countries will decline somewhat, whereas those of the current EU-member states will probably experience an increase. Finally, it is very likely that the structure of employment will shift further towards a higher share of service sector employment.Factor Analysis, Panel Data, Sectoral Case Studies

What Can We Learn From International Student Performance Studies? Some Methodological Remarks

The determinants which are decisive for a successful accumulation of human capital and the transfer of these skills into the labor market are a contentious issue in the literature on the economics of education. Different studies on, for instance, the impact of school resources typically reach different conclusions even if they utilize the same dataset. The reason behind this is that each and every study decisively depends on a set of identification assumptions which are anything but innocuous for the results obtained.This paper aims at clarifying this point by embedding the discussion on the determinants of test success in international performance studies like PISA into a theoretical model of cognitive achievement and an empirical frame of reference.PISA 2000, cognitive achievement, identification

Shot Across the Bow, Stigma or Selection? – The Effect of Repeating a Class on Educational Attainment

The German practice of compelling weak students to repeat a class has come under heavy criticism recently. Many observers fear that this practice is, at best, useless or even counterproductive. However, little is known so far on the consequences of having to repeat a class, as compared to be confronted with new course material in the next class.This paper, therefore, aims at generating empirical evidence on the effect of class repetition on individual educational attainment. Since an experimental study is precluded,we utilize an instrumental variable approach to control for unobserved heterogeneity between respondents.Our estimation results suggest that there exists a negative association between repeating a class and educational attainment. However, taking unobserved heterogeneity into account yields a statistically significant and quantitatively substantial positive effect of class repetition on educational outcomes.Schooling Degree, Instrumental Variables Estimation

Vortex Deconfinement in the XY Model with a Magnetic Field

We study vortex unbinding for the classical two-dimensional XY model in a magnetic field on square and triangular lattices. A renormalization group analysis combined with duality in the model shows that at high temperature and high field, the vortices unbind as the magnetic field is lowered in a two-step process: strings of overturned spins first proliferate and then vortices unbind. The transitions are highly continuous but are not of the Kosterlitz-Thouless type. The unbound vortex fixed point is shown to inherit properties of the underlying lattice, in particular containing a set of nodal lines that reflect the lattice symmetry.Comment: RevTex, 2 column format. 13 figure

Wigner crystal states for the two-dimensional electron gas in a double quantum well system

Using the Hartree-Fock approximation, we calculate the energy of different Wigner crystal states for the two-dimensional electron gas of a double quantum well system in a strong magnetic field. Our calculation takes interlayer hopping as well as an in-plane magnetic field into consideration. The ground The ground state at small layer separations is a one-component triangular lattice Wigner state. As the layer separation is increased, the ground state first undergoes a transition to two stacked square lattices, and then undergoes another transition at an even larger layer separation to a two-component triangular lattice. The range of the layer separation at which the two-component square lattice occurs as the ground state shrinks, and eventually disappears, as the interlayer hopping is increased. An in-plane magnetic field induces another phase transition from a commensurate to a incommensurate state, similar to that of $\nu=1$ quantum Hall state observed recently. We calculate the critical value of the in-plane field of the transition and find that the anisotropy of the Wigner state, {\it i.e.,}, the relative orientation of the crystal and the in-plane magnetic field, has a negligible effect on the critical value for low filling fractions. The effect of this anisotropy on the low-lying phonon energy is discussed. A novel exerimental geometry is proposed in which the parallel magnetic field is used to enhance the orientational correlations in the ground state when the crystal is subject toa random potential.Comment: RevTex 3.0, 22pages, 3figures available upon request. ukcm-xxx

Trends in Intergenerational Earnings Mobility

This paper examines trends in intergenerational earnings mobility by estimating ordinary least squares, quantile regression, and transition matrix coefficients using five cohorts from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, observed between 1968 and 1993. The results indicate that mobility increased for sons with respect to fathers and remained constant for sons and daughters with respect to mothers. Moreover, the findings from the father-son sample suggest that the difference between the mobility levels of the rich and the poor narrowed over this period. The estimated pattern of changing mobility is consistent with an increasing rate of regression to the mean.