Kurzarbeit (KA), Germany’s short-time work program, is widely credited with saving jobs and supporting domestic demand during the COVID-19 recession. We quantify the impact by exploiting state-level variation in exposure to the pandemic shock and KA take-up. We construct a shift-share measure...

While unemployment rates in Europe declined after the global financial crisis until 2018/19, the incidence of long-term unemployment, the share of people who have been unemployed for more than one year to the total unemployed, remained high. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic could aggravate the...

The paper surveys unemployment policies for advanced market economies and evaluates them by examining the predictions of the underlying macroeconomic theories. The basic idea is that, for the most part, different unemployment policy prescriptions rest on different macroeconomic theories, and our...

We estimate the effects of hiring subsidies for older workers on transitions from unemployment to employment in Germany. Using a natural experiment, our first set of estimates is based on a legal change extending the group of eligible unemployed persons. A subsequent legal change in the opposite...

We estimate the effects of hiring subsidies for older workers on transitions from unemployment to employment in Germany. Using a natural experiment, our first set of estimates is based on a legal change extending the group of eligible unemployed persons. A subsequent legal change in the opposite...

We analyse the duration of unemployment spells in Poland using data from the Polish Labour Force Survey of August 1994. The effects on the duration of unemployment of important socio-economic and demographic characteristics are explored besides the impacts of the unemployment benefit system and...

Although a relevant share of firms is created out of unemployment and current active labor market policies in Europe often subsidize unemployed individuals to start their own businesses, little is known about the role of unemployment insurance (UI) generosity for self-employment. By using...

This paper develops a matching model of the labor market under wage rigidity when hiring decisions are irreversible. There are two types of workers, the skilled and the unskilled. The model is used to analyze whether technological advances may have increased unemployment. It is shown that it is...

This paper proposes an ex ante evaluation of the effects of new labor contracts such as the quot;Contrat Nouvelle Embauchequot; (CNE) introduced in France in 2005. The lessons we draw are of sufficiently general interest to be applicable to other countries or reforms of employment protection...

This paper studies optimal income taxation in an environment where matching frictions generate a trade-off for workers between high wages and low unemployment risk. A higher marginal tax rate shifts the trade-off in favor of low unemployment risk, whereas a higher tax burden or unemployment...