After unification large amounts of money were spent to retrain the East Germany labour force in order to ease the transition to the new market economy. This book uses microeconometric methods and individual data to evaluate the impact of these training programmes on the participants' labour market situation. It discusses the appropriate evaluation methodology as well as the effectiveness of the actual programmes for the individual participants. The empirical results suggest that the public sector sponsored training programmes were fairly ineffective. In contrast, the training organized and paid by the enterprises caused considerable earnings growings.

After unification large amounts of money were spent to retrain the East Germany labour force in order to ease the transition to the new market economy. This book uses microeconometric methods and individual data to evaluate the impact of these training programmes on the participants' labour market situation. It discusses the appropriate evaluation methodology as well as the effectiveness of the actual programmes for the individual participants. The empirical results suggest that the public sector sponsored training programmes were fairly ineffective. In contrast, the training organized and paid by the enterprises caused considerable earnings growings.

Recoge: 1. General political context - 2. Current political developments - 3. Institutional framework - 4. Initial vocational training - 5. Continuing vocational education and training - 6. Training of VET teachers and trainers - 7. Skills and competence development - 8. Validation of learning - 9. Guidance and counselling - 10. Financing vocational training - 11. European and international dimension.

This open access book presents a topical, comprehensive and differentiated analysis of Germany’s public administration and reforms. It provides an overview on key elements of German public administration at the federal, Länder and local levels of government as well as on current reform activities of the public sector. It examines the key institutional features of German public administration; the changing relationships between public administration, society and the private sector; the administrative reforms at different levels of the federal system and numerous sectors; and new challenges and modernization approaches like digitalization, Open Government and Better Regulation. Each chapter offers a combination of descriptive information and problem-oriented analysis, presenting key topical issues in Germany which are relevant to an international readership.

Pia Nicoletta Blossfeld provides a long-term longitudinal analysis of the stepwise changes in transitions over the educational careers in East and West Germany using data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). She examines how far reforms aimed to increase the permeability in the German educational system have changed the movements of children, adolescents and young adults in Germany since the last four decades. Her book contributes to the literature of educational sociology by studying the associations between various resources of family background and respondent’s educational histories until final educational attainment. A novelty of her book is the analysis of the role of intercohort changes in social background composition on final educational attainment.

It is commonly acknowledged that the risk of social exclusion has increased over the last few decades and that young people in particular are one of the most vulnerable groups, especially if they have not yet achieved a stable so cial position. In this context a stable position is interpreted as having obtained a stable position within the labour market. Across Europe it has also become commonly acknowledged that policies have to do 'something' for young people as they represent the future of present societies. In fact, among politi cians and policy administrators there is a broadly shared myth that it is e nough doing 'anything' for young people. The thematic network 'Misleading Trajectories' which is documented in the following chapters was concerned with examining these myths and highlighting the traps of social exclusion that are inherent in policies focusing on youth transitions (school, vocational trai ning, careers advice, social security, labour market programmes). The net work was funded by the European Commission under the 4th Framework Programme for Research, Technology and Demonstration, under the strand "Targeted Socio-Economic Research" from 1998 to 2001. It involved teams from eight countries, which were Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. The network began from the observation that many policies on the local, regional, national and European level that are intended to 'lead' young adults' towards gainful employment, adult status and social integration, are in fact 'misleading'.

"The central aim of this book is to consider to what extent changes in organisations and in the nature of jobs are compatible with the need, increasingly expressed by employees, for greater integration between work and family life. The book questions what sort of dilemmas modern and future employees face, in terms of shaping their careers and organising their lives at home. The authors formulate answers to these problematic questions by shedding light on relevant developments in the European labour markets, the European workplaces, in (flexible) working patterns, changing preferences for working hours and in gender relations at work.".