Should local public employment services be merged with local social benefit administrations?

Abstract

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.

(In)Efficiency of Employment Offices: A Study on Welfare Benefits Determination – Is There a Trade-Off between Time Saving Case Management and Quality of Decisions?

“…30 See Konle-Seidl (2009) on the reasons for this decision. 31 For a comparison of the performance between Approved Local Providers and Joint Local Providers with respect to transition probabilities of the unemployed into employment see Holzner and Munz (2013).…”

Public employment services under decentralization: Evidence from a natural experiment

“…Remarkably, the official program period lasted only for three months, which was too short for employment outcomes and longer-lasting effects to be studied. Boockmann et al (2015) examine a partial decentralization of German public employment offices from 2005 (see also Holzner and Munz, 2013) and find a negative effect of decentralization on the job-finding rate of men. Unfortunately, the empirical setting was constrained by a landmark unemployment benefit reform that directly coincided with the decentralization process.…”

“…An official evaluation of this decentralization wave led to inconclusive results (DeutscherBundestag, 2008;Holzner and Munz, 2013;Boockmann et al, 2015), such that no political consensus was reached about the preferred regime. As a compromise, the co-existence of centralized and decentralized job centers was continued.…”

Public Employment Services under Decentralization: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

“…Remarkably, the official program period lasted only for three months, which was too short for employment outcomes and longer-lasting effects to be studied. Boockmann et al (2015) examine a partial decentralization of German public employment offices from 2005 (see also Holzner and Munz, 2013) and find a negative effect of decentralization on the job-finding rate of men. Unfortunately, the empirical setting was constrained by a landmark unemployment benefit reform that directly coincided with the decentralization process.…”

“…An official evaluation of this decentralization wave led to inconclusive results (DeutscherBundestag, 2008;Holzner and Munz, 2013;Boockmann et al, 2015), such that no political consensus was reached about the preferred regime. As a compromise, the co-existence of centralized and decentralized job centers was continued.…”