Recent labor market reforms in Germany aim, among other things, at reducing unemployment by restricting passive unemployment measures, emphasizing local labor market policies and re-structuring public employment services. This paper uses extensive individual administrative and regional aggregate...

Using a competing-risk framework of exiting unemployment to jobs in a local or a distant labor market area, this paper investigates whether unemployed individuals in West Germany choose search strategies that favor migrating out of declining regions. Moreover, the paper investigates how such...