This paper analyses theoretically and empirically how employment subsidies should betargeted. We contrast measures involving targeting workers with low incomes/abilities andtargeting the unemployed under the criteria of "approximate welfare efficiency" (AWE)...

In light of nonstationary search theory (van den Berg, 1990), this paper estimates the effectsof benefit entitlement periods and the size of unemployment benefits on unemploymentdurations and post-unemployment earnings in West Germany...

High rates of unemployment entail substantial costs to the working population in terms of reduced subjective well-being. This paper studies the importance of individual economic security, in particular job security, in workers´ well-being by exploiting sector-specific institutional differences...

We study both the various consequences and the incentives of outsourcing. We argue thatthe wage elasticity of labour demand is increasing as a function of the share of outsourcing,which is importantly a result consistent with existing empirical research...

Recent empirical evidence has found that employment services and small-businessassistance programmes are often successful at getting the unemployed back to work. Oneimportant concern of policy makers is to decide which of these two programmes is moreeffective and for whom...

The Swedish labour market and social policy is aimed at facilitating flexibility in the labourmarket. The active labour market policy and the design of the social security pension systemare two frequently mentioned examples of that policy...

Firms select not only how many, but also which workers to hire. Yet, in standard searchmodels of the labor market, all workers have the same probability of being hired. We arguethat selective hiring crucially affects welfare analysis. Our model is isomorphic to a searchmodel under random hiring...

We present a structural framework for the evaluation of public policies intended to increasejob search intensity. Most of the literature defines search intensity as a scalar that influencesthe arrival rate of job offers; here we treat it as the number of job applications that workerssend out....

The mild response of the German labor market to the worst global recession in post-warhistory appears as an economic miracle. In response to the crisis, Germany has shown to bea strong case of internal flexibility. We argue that important factors that have contributed tothis development include...

The Great Recession did not only affect European countries to a varying extent, its impact onnational labour markets and on specific socio-economic groups in those markets also variedgreatly. Institutional arrangements such as employment protection, unemployment insurancebenefits and minimum...