How skills acquired in vocational education and training (VET) affect wages and employment is not clear. We develop and estimate a search and matching model for workers with a VET degree. Workers differ in interpersonal, cognitive and manual skills, while firms require and value different...

We are the first to provide empirical evidence on differences in the individual costs of job loss for migrants compared to natives in Germany. Using linked employer-employee data for the period 1996-2017, we compute each displaced worker's earnings, wage, and employment loss after a mass layoff...

Job loss expectations were widespread among workers in East Germany aftfter reunification with West Germany. Though experiencing a large negative employment shock, East German workers were still overpessimistic immediately aftfter reunification with respect to their job risk. Over time, job loss...

This paper presents an analysis of labour market dynamics, in particular of flows in the labour market and how they interact and affect the evolution of unemployment rates and participation rates, the two main indicators of labour market performance. Our analysis has two special features. First,...

It has been argued that vocational education facilitates the school-to-work transition but reduces later adaptability to changing environments. Using the recent international PIAAC data, we confirm such a trade-off over the life-cycle in a difference-in-differences model that compares employment...

Fertility in the US exhibits an increasingly more procyclical pattern. We argue that women's breadwinner status is behind procyclical fertility: (i) women's relative income in the family has increased over time; and (ii) women are more likely to work in relatively stable and countercyclical...

This study investigates the effects of local broadband internet availability on establishment-level employment growth. The analysis uses data for Germany in the years 2005-2009, when broadband was introduced in rural regions of Western Germany and in large parts of Eastern Germany. Technical...

We use detailed administrative data to study how acquisitions - specifically the acquisition of a plant by a firm with a similar plant in the same local labor market - affect workers. Using an event study framework with a control group of workers at unaffected plants, we find that acquisitions...

Analyzing gender gaps of unemployed job-seekers, this study uniquely complements the broad literature focussing predominantly on gender gaps of employed workers. I consider a broad range of labor market outcomes, and disentangle the factors driving the labor market gaps of unemployed men and...

This paper considers the role of flexicurity when jobs must be reallocated from a declining, traditional sector to a skill intensive expanding sector. Workers initially decide whether to acquire qualifications for skill-intensive tasks or to accept a less demanding traditional job. Unemployment...