We use firm closure data from social security records for Austria 1978-1998 to investigate the effect of age on employment prospects. We rely on exact matching to compare workers displaced due to firm closure with similar non-displaced workers. We then use a difference-in-difference strategy to...

This paper investigates the effectiveness of benefit sanctions in reducing unemployment duration. Data from the Swiss labor market allow making a distinction between the effect of a warning that a person is not complying with eligibility requirements and the effect of the actual enforcement of a...

This paper offers quasi experimental evidence of the existence of spillover effects of UI extensions using a unique program that extended unemployment benefits drastically for a subset of workers in selected regions of Austria. We use non-eligible unemployed in treated regions, and a...

We study the causal effects of changes in parental leave provisions on fertility and return-to-work behavior. We exploit a policy change that took place in 1990 in Austria which extended the maximum duration of parental leave from the child's first to the child's second birthday. As parental...

We estimate the causal effect of early retirement on mortality for blue-collar workers. To overcome the problem of endogenous selection, we exploit an exogenous change in unemployment insurance rules in Austria that allowed workers in eligible regions to withdraw from the workforce up to 3.5...

This paper studies how changes in the two key parameters of unemployment insurance – the benefit replacement rate (RR) and the potential duration of benefits (PBD) – affect the duration of unemployment. In 1989, the Austrian government made unemployment insurance more generous by changing,...