This paper analyzes whether technological change improves equality of labor market opportunities by decreasing returns to parental background. We find that in Germany during the 1990s, computerization improved the access to technologyadopting occupations for workers with low-educated parents,...

Despite the importance of business creation for the economy and a relevant share of new firms being started out of unemployment, most research has focused on analyzing the effect of unemployment insurance (UI) policies on reemployment outcomes that ignore self-employment. In this paper, we...

We offer a new explanation for why taxes have become less redistributive in many countries in parallel with an increase in income concentration. When performance-based contracts are needed to incentivize effort, redistribution through progressive income taxes becomes less precisely targeted....

Do investment programs create more jobs in tight or in slack labor markets? We study this question using data from a large, long-term photovoltaic invest scheme in Germany. Comparing counties with high and low unemployment both over time and across space, we find that photovoltaic installations...

As skills of labor-market entrants are usually not directly observed by employers, individuals acquire skill signals. To study which signals are valued by employers, we simultaneously and independently randomize a broad range of skill signals on pairs of resumes of fictitious applicants among...

In this paper, a short survey is given on the contents and some problems of the theory of optimal currency areas. In addition, a new criterion for the assessment of the optimality of a currency area is proposed: the ability of member states of a monetary union to adjust their economic system to...

Against the background of the recent housing boom and bust in countries such as Spain and Ireland, we investigate in this paper the macroeconomic consequences of cross-border banking in monetary unions such as the euro area. For this purpose, we incorporate in an otherwise standard two-region...