Germany experienced an even deeper fall in GDP in the Great Recession than the United States, with little employment loss. Employers' reticence to hire in the preceding expansion, associated in part with a lack of confidence it would last, contributed to an employment shortfall equivalent to 40...

This study uses aggregate data for 23 OECD countries over the 1960-1997 period to examine the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and fatalities. The main finding is that total mortality and deaths from several common causes increase when labor markets strengthen. For instance,...

In the late nineties, Germany was often seen as a laggard with respect to labor market and welfare state reforms with institutional inertia being reflected in notoriously sluggish employment growth and rising unemployment. Recent years, however, saw a complex sequence of reforms with regard to...

This study charts the differences between the sickness absence of immigrants and Swedes during a period when a flourishing labour market in the beginning of the 1990s turned into a tense and problematic one. We consider not only human capital factors for various immigrant groups and natives, but...

This paper estimates the causal effect of perceived job insecurity – i.e. the fear of involuntary job loss – on health in a sample of men from 22 European countries. We rely on an original instrumental variable approach based on the idea that workers perceive greater job security in...

Using a large linked employer-employee data set for Germany, we find that the existence of a works council is associated with a lower separation rate to employment, in particular for men and workers with low tenure. While works council monopoly effects show up in all specifications, clear voice...

This study estimates the effect of job loss on health for near elderly employees based on longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study. Previous studies find a strong negative correlation between unemployment and health. To control for possible reverse causality, this study focuses on...

This paper looks at the wage effects of perceived and objective insecurity in Germany and the UK using the GSOEP and BHPS panels. The distinction between perceived worry about job loss and economic indicators such as regional unemployment rates and the share of temporary contracts is...