In 2009, Germany invested 15.4 Billion Euro in infrastructure to avert the looming recession. In this study, we evaluate whether the German stimulus program was successful in limiting the impact of the crisis on the job market. We exploit exogenous cross-sectional variation to identify the...

We analyse the treatment effects of a large scale German active labour market program. Modellprojekte Bürgerarbeit is a modified public employment scheme, with an activation period as a first step. Using data from individual employment records we perform matching estimations to analyse the...

To which extent does an increase in effectiveness of a public employment agency on the one hand and a reduction of unemployment benefits on the other reduce unemployment? Using the recent labour market reform in Germany we find that an improved agency explains substantial part of the observed...

Between 1979 and 2009, the German labour market moved along a Beveridge curve with changing slope that used to shift outwards but shifted inwards after severe labour market reforms had come into force. We analyse these dynamics and focus on the macroeconomic outcome of the reforms. For that...

Job polarization is a widely documented phenomenon in developed countries since the 1980s: employment has been shifting from middle to low- and high-income workers, while average wage growth has been slower for middle-income workers than at both extremes. We document 1) that polarization has...

Theoretical models of downward real wage rigidity generate asymmetric wage cyclicality with real wages being rigid in "bad" times but upwardly flexible during "good". In this paper we use an administrative panel dataset from Germany to establish that such asymmetries are very salient in Germany....

We show that more human capital improves incentives in a standard optimal taxation problem: common assumptions about preferences and technology imply that the disutility of labor decreases less strongly in unobserved ability if agents have more human capital. Human capital thus reduces the...

This paper analyzes the implications of bilateral bargaining over wages and employment between a producer and a union representing a finite number of identical workers in a monetary macroeconomic model of the AS AD type with government activity. Wages and aggregate employment levels are set...

Demografischer Wandel und die strukturellen Veränderungen auf dem Arbeitsmarkt tragen gemeinsam zur Alterung des Beschäftigtenbestands bei. Während der demografische Wandel eine gesellschaftliche Entwicklung ist, variieren Arbeitsmarkttrends über Berufe. Basierend auf Beschäftigtendaten der...