This book examines the effectiveness of active labour market policies and their contribution to the prevention of social exclusion. The evaluation studies reported in this volume focus on two aspects of active labour market policies that have been relatively neglected in previous research and merit special attention.The first part of the book deals with aggregate impact analysis. Using examples from France, Germany, The Netherlands and Spain, the contributors attempt to estimate the impact of active labour market policies on the transition from unemployment to employment using aggregate data at the regional level. Although quantitative in nature, these contributions take into account qualitative aspects such as the socio-economic context of the countries concerned and the structure of active labour market policies. The book then focuses on implementation issues and includes implementation studies carried out in Germany, The Netherlands and Sweden. The qualitative element plays a far more important role in these contributions which rely on case studies and surveys in addition to statistical data.
