"The current low participation rate of low-skilled workers in vocational re-training activities as well as the relatively high share of youth without vocational qualification are major challenges for German labour market policies. Recently implemented programs by the Federal Employment Service...

"This paper provides an analysis of the labour market entry of migrant youth in Germany after completion of an apprenticeship. We are particularly interested in the impact of local cultural diversity on a successful career start. Focusing on the cohort of people completing apprenticeships in...

"This paper examines if and to what extend regional mobility has increased after finishing vocational in-firm training between 1977 and 2004. Particular interest is given to the importance of regional mobility for occupational continuity at labor market entry. Can mobility lower the probability...

"Despite large-scale governmental efforts to combat homelessness, homelessness rates can only be reduced but not eliminated completely by the measures usually applied. Hence, there is an obvious need to investigate additional factors which contribute to homelessness and gain insights on how to...

"Theories in regional science predict that related establishments benefit from their mutual proximity due to forward-backward linkages, labor market pooling and knowledge spillovers (the Marshallian forces). While the existence of these externalities as a whole is well supported by the empirical...

"Despite large-scale governmental efforts to combat homelessness, homelessness rates can only be reduced but not eliminated completely by the measures usually applied. Hence, there is an obvious need to investigate additional factors which contribute to homelessness and gain insights on how to...

"This paper analyzes job referral effects that are based on residential location. We use georeferenced record data for the entire working population (liable to social security) and the corresponding establishments in the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan area, which is Germany's largest (and EU's second...

"Using a linked employer-employee dataset and taking the perspective of individuals rather than firms, this paper analyzes some effects of joining start-ups. We show that entrants in new firms differ from those joining incumbent firms, and we use a matching approach to compare a group of...

"So far little empirical evidence exists on how real wages of newly hired workers react to business cycle conditions. This paper aims at filling this gap for Germany by analyzing the cyclical behavior of real wages of newly hired workers while controlling for 'cyclical upgrading' and 'cyclical...