The paper "Can Voluntary Adult Education Reduce Unemployment? Causal Evidence from East Germany after Reunification" by Kaja Rupieper and Stephan Thomsen has been accepted for publication in the Journal for Labour Market Research.
The paper evaluates the so far ignored contribution of German Volkshochschulen (VHS) to the transition of the East German labor market during the 1990s. The authors evaluate the effects of courses provided by VHS on unemployment in a county-level analysis of East Germany between 1991 and 2002. After the German Reunification in 1990, East Germany transitioned from a centrally planned economic system to a market economy. At the time, upskilling through adult education was deemed essential for the successful integration of the workforce into the labor market. Besides substantial mandatory training programs provided by active labor market policies, VHS were the most important providers of voluntary adult education. The economic effects of their courses have not been analyzed so far. The study at hand combines comprehensive data on the activities of VHS and newly digitized labour market data. The identification strategy exploits the decentralized expansion of courses, which led to substantial and quasi-random variation in course numbers. The empirical results show no evidence that VHS courses harmed labor market integration, in contrast to some active labor market policies. Courses did not affect subsequent unemployment on average. Yet, in counties neighboring West Germany, courses reduced unemployment. Low labor demand may have restricted the realization of education effects. As both work-related and purely recreational courses reduced unemployment in counties bordering West Germany, the results also hint towards the relevance of social capital for successful labor market integration.
About the journal (taken from journal's webpage):
The Journal for Labour Market Research is a journal in the interdisciplinary field of labour market research. The journal follows international research standards and strives for international visibility. With its empirical and multidisciplinary orientation, the journal publishes papers in English language concerning the labour market, employment, education / training and careers. Papers dealing with country-specific labour market aspects are suitable if they adopt an innovative approach and address a topic of interest to a wider international audience. The journal is distinct from most others in the field, as it provides a platform for contributions from a broad range of academic disciplines. The editors encourage replication studies, as well as studies based on international comparisons. Accordingly, authors are expected to make their empirical data available to readers who might wish to replicate a published work on request. Submitted papers, who have passed a prescreening process by the editors, are generally reviewed by two peer reviewers, who remain anonymous for the author.
