In 1996 Austria introduced a tax for the layoff of older workers, which was tightened in 2000. The regulation requires employers to pay a tax of up to 170 percent of the gross monthly income when they give notice to employees aged 50 or more. We use data from Austrian social security records to...

We analyse the consequences of starting a wage subsidised job, marginal employment, for unemployed workers. Marginal employment is a type of wage subsidy paid to unemployed workers and they do not lose their unemployment benefits if the wage is below a certain threshold. We ask if the unemployed...

In this paper we investigate earnings mobility in Austria from the angle of individual persons: earnings mobility over time has two aspects: positional changes and the volatility of earnings over time. Whereas the further is a positive outcome, more volatility as such can be seen as negative. We...

This study deals with educational production in Austria and is focused on the potential impact of schoolmates on students’ academic outcomes. We used PISA 2000 data to estimate peer effects for 15 and 16 year old students. The estimations yield substantial positive effects of the peer...

Labor force participation rates of mothers in Austria and Germany are similar, however full-time employment rates are much higher among Austrian mothers. In order to find out to what extent these differences can be attributed to differences in the tax transfer system, we perform a comparative...

In this paper we evaluate the impact of the old-age part-time scheme (OAPT) on the Austrian labour market which was a policy to allow flexible retirement options for the elderly with an aim to increase labour supply. According to our matching estimates employment probability increases slightly,...

Two pension reforms in Austria increased the early retirement age from 60 to 62 for men and from 55 to 58.25 for women. The reforms reduced early retirement by 18.9 percentage points among affected men aged 60-62 and by 22.3 percentage points among affected women aged 55-58.25. The associated...

We use data on Austrian firms and employees to estimate the effects of employer-provided training on productivity, wages, and the inequality of wages within firms. While the average amount spent on employer-provided training is low in general, we find a robust positive elasticity of training on...