An establishment can improve its productivity by hiring workers from more productive establishments. Then, how important is worker reallocation for aggregate productivity growth? To study this question, I develop a general equilibrium model where knowledge transmits as workers reallocate from...

This paper emphasizes the two-way causality between the provision of unemployment insurance and the cultural transmission of work ethic. Values affect the size of the moral-hazard problem and, hence, the policy to be implemented. Conversely, when parents rationally choose how much effort to...

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,...

Estimating the returns to migration from East to West Germany, this paper focuses on pre-migration employment dynamics, earnings uncertainty, and job change in the source region. Migrants are found to be negatively selected with respect to labor market outcomes, with a large drop in earnings and...

Previous work suggests a general uncertainty surrounding the migration process acts as a barrier to outmigration. In this paper, we argue that this barrier is exacerbated when relative economic policy uncertainty is higher in the target country and mitigated when relatively higher in the origin...