Labor market theories allowing for search frictions make marked predictions on the effect of the degree of frictions on wages. Often, the effect is predicted to be negative. Despite the popularity of these theories, this has never been tested. We perform tests with matched worker-firm data. The...

Labor Market Intermediaries (LMIs) are entities or institutions that interpose themselves between workers and firms to facilitate, inform, or regulate how workers are matched to firms, how work is accomplished, and how conflicts are resolved. This paper offers a conceptual foundation for...

The IAB employment subsample is now available for researchers in a third, anonymised version. Following the so-called basic file and the regional file from the IAB employment subsample, which encompassed the years 1975 to 1990, the actualized version of the basic file covers now the years 1975...

In this paper, we use 1991-2005 panel data on the unemployed, vacancies, inflow into unemployment, and outflow from unemployment in five former communist economies and in the western part of Germany (a benchmark western economy) to examine the evolution of unemployment together with that of...

In this paper we study the occupational progress and earnings attainment of immigrants in Germany over time and compare them to native Germans. Our analysis is guided by the human capital and segmented labor market theories. To assess the separate effects of occupational segmentation and...

This paper summarizes evidence for the existence of a wage curve - a downward-sloping relationship between the level of pay and the local unemployment rate - in modern micro data. At the time of writing, the curve has been found in 40 nations. Its elasticity is approximately -0.1.

This note presents evidence of the following gender asymmetry: the job-finding effort of married men and women is affected by the income of their spouses in opposite directions. For women, spouse income influences job finding negatively, just as own wealth does: the more the man earns and the...

The article examines public-private sector wage differentials in Spain using microdata from the Structure of Earnings Survey (Encuesta de Estructura Salarial). When applying various decomposition techniques, we find that it is important to distinguish by gender and type of contract. Our results...

The enormous speed of change in the working world is associated with greater job insecurity. As a dynamic external flexibilization instrument, temporary agency work is characterized by high labor turnover rates. As a result, agency workers might perceive more job insecurity than permanent staff....

Sector-specific surcharge collective labor agreements between the bargaining partners in the staffing industry allow for a reduction of wage gaps between agency workers and permanent staff in case of long-term job assignments to user companies. Surcharges up to 50% after a surcharge-free period...