Even before the Great Recession, U.S. employment growth was unimpressive. Between 2000 and 2007, the economy gave back the considerable employment gains achieved during the 1990s, with a historic contraction in manufacturing employment being a prime contributor to the slump. We estimate that...

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,...

Using specific panel data of German welfare benefit recipients, we investigate the non-pecuniary life satisfaction effects of in-work benefits. Our empirical strategy combines difference-in-difference designs with synthetic control groups to analyze transitions of workers between unemployment,...

The U.S. and EU Merger Guidelines strongly emphasize the relevance of the “ease of entry” argument in merger evaluations. Up to now, very little is known empirically about how mergers affect entry and exit, and the resulting number of firms in the markets. We empirically test this aspect of...

This study investigates the impact of firm-specific discount factors on merger formation and market performance. We estimate firm-specific discount factors for 228 publicly traded and privately held firms operating in the semiconductor market and apply a heterogeneous treatment effects model...

This paper shows that outsourcing of parts of the workforce in unionized firms leads to wage moderation and as long as the share of the outsourced workforce is not too large, this wage moderation effect on domestic employment outweighs the direct substitution effect so that domestic employment...

This paper estimates and quantifies the impact of structural reforms on per capita income for a large set of OECD and non-OECD countries. The findings suggest that the quality of institutions matters to a large extent for economic outcomes. More competition-friendly regulations, as measured by...

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 exploit the gender-specific components of large-scale labor demand shocks stemming from rising international manufacturing competition to test how shifts in the relative economic stature of young men versus young women affected marriage, fertility and children's living circumstances during...

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...