Although explanations of the persistence of high unemployment in Germany, in particular long-term unemployment, have increasingly focused on structural factors, there is only very limited evidence on their empirical importance so far. In this paper, these factors are analyzed based on a...

This paper follows up recent work on the relationship between (un)employment and wage effects of social security financing undertaken by the OECD Jobs Study. Based on a simple macroeconometric model of the labour market, I investigate whether the peculiar OECD results for Germany on the...