Immigration is often thought of as a measure suited to mitigate the fiscal consequences of demographic ageing for unfunded public pension schemes. Building on Sinn (1997), the paper explores in some more detail the conditions under which immigrants are a net fiscal asset for national pension budgets not only on a temporary basis – i.e., as long as they are paying contributions and before they start drawing benefits – but also in the long run. Illustrative simulations are provided for the cases of Germany, Italy, the UK, and the US. It turns out that the value of immigrants depends on the nature of the pension scheme (Bismarck vs Beveridge). Also, it is strongly affected by the immigrants' characteristics in terms of skills and fertility. Furthermore, effects differ substantially for the cases of temporary vs permanent migration.

The German Federal government has allowed local governments of some regions (Approved Local Providers) to be solely responsible for the care of unemployment benefit II recipients. In the remaining regions Joint Local Agencies were formed, where the local social benefit administrations work together with the local public employment services. We find that despite positive self-selection Approved Local Providers do not perform better than Joint Local Agencies. Even more interestingly, using a unique data set on organisational characteristics we are able to show that the organisational features implemented primarily by Approved Local Providers are positively correlated with the job finding probability of the unemployment benefits II recipients. Thus, local governments that self-selected into Approved Local Providers seem to have implemented a better organisational structure. However, their relatively poor performance overall compared to Joint Local Agencies suggests that they underestimated the benefits of having the local public employment service merged with the local social benefit administration. Zusammenfassung Die Deutsche Bundesregierung hat ausgewählten Kommunen (zugelassene kommunale Träger zkT) die Möglichkeit eröffnet, sich eigenverantwortlich um die Betreuung erwerbsfähiger Hilfebedürftiger (sog. Hartz IV Empfänger) zu kümmern. In den restlichen Kommunen wurden sogenannte Arbeitsgemeinschaften (ARGEn) von Arbeitsagenturen und Kommunen gegründet, in denen die kommunale Sozialverwaltung mit den Arbeitsagenturen zusammenarbeitet. Doch trotz der positiven Selbstselektion der zkT-Regionen weisen diese für die erwerbsfä-higen Hilfebedürftigen keine höheren Übergangsraten auf als die ARGEn. Um einen tieferen Einblick in die organisatorische Struktur der relevanten Institutionen zu gewinnen, wurde ein spezifischer Datensatz genutzt, der wichtige Merkmale aller Arbeitsagenturen enthält. Die Tatsache, dass zkT überwiegend Organisationsstrukturen verwenden, die positiv korreliert sind mit höheren Erfolgsquoten beim Übergang in die Erwerbstätigkeit von Arbeitslosengeld IIEmpfängern, deutet darauf hin, dass die Verantwortlichen auf regionaler Ebene, die das zkT Modell gewählt haben, die für die Arbeitslosengeld II-Empfänger erfolgreichere Organisationsform gefunden haben. Allerdings bedeutet die relativ schlechte Performance der zkT-Regionen im Vergleich zu den ARGEn-Regionen -wie auf Basis des TreatmentEffekts unter Kontrolle der Organisationsmerkmale gezeigt wurde -, dass auch die bessere Organisationsform nicht die Nachteile kompensieren kann, die sich aus der integrierten Form der kommunalen Arbeitsvermittlung und der Sozialverwaltung ergeben haben.

The German Federal government has allowed local governments of some regions (Approved Local Providers) to be solely responsible for the care of unemployment benefit II recipients. In the remaining regions Joint Local Agencies were formed, where the local social benefit administrations work together with the local public employment services. We find that despite positive self-selection Approved Local Providers do not perform better than Joint Local Agencies. Even more interestingly, using a unique data set on organisational characteristics we are able to show that the organisational features implemented primarily by Approved Local Providers are positively correlated with the job finding probability of the unemployment benefits II recipients. Thus, local governments that self-selected into Approved Local Providers seem to have implemented a better organisational structure. However, their relatively poor performance overall compared to Joint Local Agencies suggests that they underestimated the benefits of having the local public employment service merged with the local social benefit administration.