"A major unemployment and welfare benefit reform took place in Germany in 2005. One objective of this reform was to more strongly encourage an adult worker model of the family, with an emphasis on activating the formerly inactive. Our hypothesis is, however, that assignments to activation...

"We revisit the puzzling finding that labour market performance appears to deteriorate, as suggested by negative time trends in empirical matching functions. We investigate whether these trends simply arise from omitted variable bias. Concretely, we consider the omission of job seekers beyond...

"Using a search theoretical model, we analyse the effects of the information flow via social networks (friends, relatives and other personal contacts) by comparing monetary and non-monetary outcomes in obtaining jobs via networks versus formal methods. Propensity-score matching on survey data...

"This article provides a result-oriented view on the current status of German active labor market policy evaluation. The literature shows that nearly all groups of instruments positively affect the labor market prospects of at least particular groups of participants. However, regarding the...

"Many labor market models use both idiosyncratic productivity and a vacancy free entry condition. This paper shows that these two features combined generate an equilibrium comovement between matches on the one hand and unemployment and vacancies on the other hand, which is observationally...

"One of the most far-reaching proposals for reform in the field of labour market policy is to link the receipt of transfer payments in general to a 'service in return' from the recipient. This concept operates under the name of workfare. This paper examines the possibilities and limits of...

"This paper analyses theoretical effects of minimum wages on employment and the wage distribution under a frictional setting. I review new developments in search theory and discuss the influence of minimum wages on wages and employment under each setting. Thereby, a major theoretical focus of...

"Unemployment insurance (UI) sanctions in the form of benefit reductions are intended to set disincentives for UI recipients to stay unemployed. Empirical evidence about the effects of UI sanctions in Germany is sparse. Using administrative data we investigate the effects of sanctions on the...

"Die Arbeit untersucht, wie stabil die Ergebnisse der jüngst vom Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung veröffentlichten Berechnungen zur Stillen Reserve für den Zeitraum von 1970 bis 2002 hinsichtlich der zentralen Modellannahme über die Höhe der Vollbeschäftigung sind. Dazu...

"In 2005, benefit sanctions in Germany were tightened with the introduction of the new means-tested unemployment benefit II (UB II), codified in Social Code (SC) II. This study analyzes the effect of benefit sanctions on the reservation wage of sanctioned unemployment benefit II recipients. The...