Does short-term training activate means-tested unemployment benefit recipients in Germany?

"This paper estimates for a sample of means-tested unemployment benefit recipients the effects of their participation in short-term training programmes in Germany. We apply propensity score matching and rely on a large sample of treated and controls from administrative data, which in contrast to data used in many comparable evaluation studies is rich in terms of information on household members. We regard a period after the beginning of the year 2005 just after a reform of the means-tested benefit system, which aimed at activating employable people in needy households. Short-term training programmes intensively target such persons. We study whether the programme has an impact on the 'regular employment' rate of the treated. Moreover, we also quantify whether it reduces their job-seeker rate and their rate of unemployment benefit II receipt. We estimated effects for within company and classroom training separately and find that mainly the former programme that establishes a contact to an employer has a considerable impact on the regular employment rate of the participants. The impacts on the other outcome variables are usually weaker. Our analysis considers effect heterogeneity. We generally distinguish between men and women in East and West Germany. But we also regard effect heterogeneity by age, migration background, qualification, unemployment rate, family status/children and time since last job. Both programmes tend to be less effective in particular for people aged younger than 25 years than for others. This may reflect that the programmes are also a tool to avoid that young adults are registered as unemployed for longer than three months." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))Trainingsmaßnahme - Auswirkungen, Beschäftigungseffekte, Hartz-Reform - Erfolgskontrolle, Arbeitslosengeld II-Empfänger, Bedarfsgemeinschaft, berufliche Reintegration, Lernort Betrieb, Lernort Schule, arbeitslose Frauen, arbeitslose Männer, regionaler Vergleich, geschlechtsspezifische Faktoren, arbeitsmarktpolitische Maßnahme, Arbeitslosigkeitsdauer, Integrierte Erwerbsbiografien, IAB-Bewerberangebotsdatei, Ostdeutschland, Westdeutschland, Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Who is targeted by One-Euro-Jobs? : a selectivity analysis

"In 2005 major reforms of the means-tested unemployment benefit system were implemented in Germany. One element of the reforms was to activate benefit recipients by a workfare programme, the so-called One-Euro-Job programme. More than 600,000 benefit recipients entered this programme in the year 2005. This paper investigates for a sample of means-tested unemployment benefit recipients the selection into One-Euro-Jobs in spring 2005 with the help of binary probit models. As there are substantial gender and regional effects, we estimate the selection equations for men and women in East and West Germany separately. Women have a lower probability of participating if they have a child under the age of three, whereas this makes no difference for men. Then, we find that young adults below 25 years begin a One-Euro-Job with a higher probability than other age groups. Moreover, special target groups such as individuals with migration background are not promoted with One-Euro- Jobs. They participate with a lower probability than Germans without migration background. Overall, we conclude that a concentration on defined target groups cannot be observed. To analyse the sizable differences in participation probabilities of women in East and West Germany a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition of effects is applied. It turns out that the differences can partly be traced back to characteristics such as qualification and employment history and to the availability of child care facilities." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))Arbeitsgelegenheit, Teilnehmer, Teilnehmerauswahl, Teilnehmerstruktur, arbeitslose Frauen, arbeitslose Männer, arbeitslose Jugendliche, ausländische Arbeitnehmer, Eltern, Altersstruktur

Surface modification of a polyether-urethane with RGD-containing peptides for enhanced cell attachment and signalling

Abstract of article examining the chemical modification of polyurethane with RGD-containing peptides offers a means of encouraging the adhesion, spreading and proliferation of cells cultured on its surface. This study assesses the efficacy of a modification procedure using surface analysis techniques and preliminary cell culture studies

Quality-driven SoC architecture synthesis for embedded applications.

The recent spectacular progress in modern nanoelectronics created a big stimulus towards development of SoCs for embedded applications. Unfortunately, it also introduced unusual silicon and system complexity and heterogeneity, which result in many serious SoC development issues. Additional difficult to solve issues are due to very high throughput and low energy demands of many modern embedded applications. These issues cannot be resolved without new more adequate system architecture concepts, as well as, methods and EDA-tools for an adequate system-level design exploration and multi-objective optimal system architecture synthesis. This tutorial discusses the problems of multi-objective optimal architecture synthesis and trade-off exploitation for complex hard real-time embedded heterogeneous multi-processor SoCs, and model-based semi-automatic architecture synthesis methods that enable its effective and efficient solution. It thoroughly discusses the abstract models of the architecture design issue that involve the abstract system behavior models, system platform models and multi-objective decision models, as well as, the construction of the models and their usage for the actual system architecture exploration and multi-objective optimal architecture synthesis. In the role of examples, it uses the system architecture exploration and synthesis methods and the corresponding EDA-tools that we recently developed, and the SoC architectures synthesised with our tools for several real-world designs related to the newest highly demanding wireless communication and multimedia standards

Examining Behavioral Reactivity and Cognitive Differences within the CHC Theory of Intelligence Among Children.

Linking cognition and behavior has long been an area of interest to the field of psychology in its endeavors to understand what innate factors influence human behavior. To date, the majority of research linking emotional reactivity to cognition has focused on single areas of intellectual functioning on specific diagnostic profiles or learning disorders rather than a comprehensive comparison to cognitive profile typology. Nearly all the research conducted to date continues to define cognition and emotion as disparate entities, rather than exploring a more integrated view of emotion and cognition. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine cognitive profile differences among children with internalizing versus externalizing profiles of emotional reactivity in terms of Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory constructs as measured by the Wechsler Intelligence Test for Children, Fourth Edition [WISC-IV]. A cognitive-behavioral approach was used in conducting a secondary analysis of BASC2 and WISC-IV composite scores from a limited data set of 128 male and female students 6-16 years of age obtained from a local public school district. Results of paired-sample t tests indicated that the VCI was significantly higher for the BASC2 internalizing group (t =3.063, p \u3c .05, two-tailed), suggesting the existence of distinct verbal cognitive skillsets among groups. This study contributes to social change by providing information to researchers and practitioners about cognitive differences among children with internalizing and externalizing behaviors that may lead to more effective cognitive-behavioral research and intervention strategies