In a number of European economies youth unemployment has increased again to unexpected and unwanted levels. It has become one of the pressing labor market problems that many countries are currently facing. This special issue involves a collection of current research and new findings. The contributions improve our understanding of the determinants and economic consequences of youth unemployment and implications for policies to combat it

Empirical measurement of impacts of active labour market programmes has started to become a central task of economic researchers. New improved econometric methods have been developed that will probably influence future empirical work in various other fields of economics as well. This volume contains a selection of original papers from leading experts, among them James J. Heckman, Noble Prize Winner 2000 in economics, addressing these econometric issues at the theoretical and empirical level. The theoretical part contains papers on tight bounds of average treatment effects, instrumental variables estimators, impact measurement with multiple programme options and statistical profiling. The empirical part provides the reader with econometric evaluations of active labour market programmes in Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Slovak Republic and Sweden.

Integrierte Umweltschutztechniken gewinnen international an Bedeutung, weil von ihnen neben okologischen Vorteilen gleichzeitig auch Impulse fur den Standortwettbewerb und damit den Arbeitsmarkt erwartet werden. Die Studie liefert erstmals empirisch fundierte Aussagen zu den Beschaftigungseffekten integrierter Umweltschutztechnik. Sie stutzt sich auf Fallstudien, eine Breitenerhebung bei Industrieunternehmen inkl. einer telefonischen Zusatzbefragung bei umweltinnovativen Firmen, eine Patentanalyse sowie Modellrechnungen mit einem allgemeinen Gleichgewichtsmodell fur die Europaische Union.
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