For representative German panel data, we show that voluntary job switching leads to relatively high levels of life satisfaction, though only for some time, whereas the impact of exogenously triggered job changes is ambiguous. Risk aversion interacts negatively with this effect in life...

This paper analyzes the allocation of workers to jobs and the wage distribution in Germany. Our main contribution is to reconcile prominent empirical models of wage dispersion (Abowd et al., 1999; Card et al., 2013) with theoretical sorting models (Shimer and Smith, 2000; Eeckhout and Kircher, 2011;...

We present an applied general equilibrium modelling approach to analyse employment and unemployment effects of labour tax cuts in an economy where wages are determined through firm-union bargaining at the sectoral level. In such a labour market regime, simulations for Germany show that labour...

Working time account is an organization tool that allows firms to smooth their demand for hours employed. Descriptive literature suggests that working time accounts are likely to reduce layoffs and inhibit increases in unemployment during recessions. In a model of optimal labour demand I show...

We study the relationship between employment growth and worker flows in excess of job flows (churn) at the establishment level using the new German AWFP dataset spanning from 1975-2014. Churn is above 5 percent of employment along the entire employment growth distribution and most pronounced at...

A key question in labor market research is how the unemployment insurance system affects unemployment rates and labor market dynamics. We revisit this old question studying the German Hartz reforms. On average, lower separation rates explain 76% of declining unemployment after the reform, a fact...

The paper argues that economic integration causes problems for the labor market of high-wage countries due to cross-border labor mobility and the accompanying increase in labor supply. Empirical evidence is provided from an analysis of regional labor market effects of German re-unification. In...

The purpose of this paper is to assess intergenerational occupational mobility in Germany. Using data from the Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP), we find a high persistence of occupational choices across fathers and children. To separate effects related to parental advice and influence (nurture) from...

Workers wrongly anchor their beliefs about outside options on their current wage. In particular, low-paid workers underestimate wages elsewhere. We document this anchoring bias by eliciting workers’ beliefs in a representative survey in Germany and comparing them to measures of actual outside...

When workers are displaced from their jobs in mass layoffs or firm closures, they experience lasting adverse labor market consequences. We study how these consequences vary with the amount of skill mismatch that workers experience when returning to the labor market. Using novel measures of skill...