"The labor markets of most industrialized countries are polarized. This means that employment has grown in jobs at the upper and lower tails of the wage distribution, while employment in the middle part of the distribution has stagnated or declined. However, there exists no measure that allows a...

"In Germany, overtime work is a well-established instrument for varying working hours of employees and is of great importance for establishments as a measure of internal flexibility. However, not all employees are affected to the same degree by a variation of the work effort through overtime...

"This paper addresses the 'Jack-of-all-Trades' hypothesis, which presumes that it is individuals' variety of competencies/experience that drives entrepreneurship instead of their level of productivity (Lazear, 2005). The analysis focuses on two related dimensions of this variety argument: taste...

"Labour markets in most highly developed countries are marked by rising levels of skill segregation in the production process and increasing inequalities in skill-specific employment prospects. Local human capital has a likely effect on skill specific productivity levels and employment growth....

"We consider Roy's economies with perfectly competitive labor markets and asymmetric information. Firms choose their investments in physical capital before observing the characteristics of the labor markets they will face. We provide conditions under which equilibrium allocations are constrained...

"This paper investigates the selectivity of vocational training courses on Germany's labor market. We consider the case of a special program ('IFlaS'), which provides vocational training for low-skilled unemployed. The program aims at alleviating the foreseeable shortage of skilled workers in...

"During the recession of 2008-09 Germany experienced a huge decrease in GDP. Employment, however, remained surprisingly stable. The so-called German labor market miracle is often ascribed to the intensive usage of short-time work. Despite the resurgence of this instrument, little is known about...

"We consider an economy where production may use labor of two different skill levels. Workers are heterogeneous and, by investing in education, self-select into one of the two skills. Ex-ante, when firms choose their investments in physical capital, they do not know the level of human capital...

"The empirical literature on unemployment almost exclusively focuses on the duration of distinct unemployment spells. In contrast we use a large German administrative micro data set for the time span 1975-2004 to investigate individual lifetime unemployment (defined as the total length of all...

"Unions are an important indicator of various measures of firm performance in Anglo-Saxon countries. The same holds for the German analogue of workplace unionism - the works council. Using the IAB Establishment Panel I examine the impact of works councils and shop-floor participation on further...