According to the aims of the labour market reforms of the 90s implemented in many European countries, workers may stay at their first job for a shorter time, but should be able to switch jobs easily. This would generate a trade-off between job opportunities and job stability. This paper...

Extensive literature demonstrates that workers with high tenure suffer large and persistent earnings losses when they are displaced. We study the reasons behind these losses in a tractable search model that includes a lifecycle dimension, endogenous job mobility, and worker- and...

The German "employment miracle", with a weak decline in employment and low unemployment during the great recession, seems to be a good example for a successful labour market reform. Nevertheless, there are concerns about rising inequality in the labour market. In this paper we analyze the...

We provide new estimates on worker flow rates in and out of unemployment for Germany covering the last six decades. In the 1980s, Germany emerged as the sick man of Europe with a labor market characterized by persistently high unemployment rates. We attribute a substantial fraction of the rise...

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...