"A casual look at regional unemployment rates reveals that there are vast differences which cannot be explained by different institutional settings. Our paper attempts to trace these differences in the regions' labour market performance back to the regions' specialisation in products that are...

"A casual look at regional unemployment rates reveals that there are vast differences which cannot be explained by different institutional settings. Our paper attempts to trace these differences in the regions' labour market performance back to the regions' specialisation in products that are...

"A major unemployment and welfare benefit reform took place in Germany in 2005. One objective of this reform was to more strongly encourage an adult worker model of the family, with an emphasis on activating the formerly inactive. Our hypothesis is, however, that assignments to activation...

"Between 2005 and 2007 the German government raised a per-capita amount of around 10.000 Euros for each transition out of unemployment benefit receipt into basic social care, to be paid by the unemployment insurance. The so called 'Aussteuerungsbetrag' set strong incentives that investments in...

"Using a linked employer-employee dataset and taking the perspective of individuals rather than firms, this paper analyzes some effects of joining start-ups. We show that entrants in new firms differ from those joining incumbent firms, and we use a matching approach to compare a group of...

"For Germany, our study estimates average effects of further vocational training, short training and job creation schemes on the employment prospects of participants. We compare participation in each programme with non-participation as well as with participation in one of the other programmes....

"We revisit the puzzling finding that labour market performance appears to deteriorate, as suggested by negative time trends in empirical matching functions. We investigate whether these trends simply arise from omitted variable bias. Concretely, we consider the omission of job seekers beyond...

"The aim of this paper is to formalise a two-country model of trade liberalisation and technical change with heterogenous firms and search-and-matching frictions in the labour market. By considering different sectors and factors of production we allow for comparative advantages and study the...

"Using a search theoretical model, we analyse the effects of the information flow via social networks (friends, relatives and other personal contacts) by comparing monetary and non-monetary outcomes in obtaining jobs via networks versus formal methods. Propensity-score matching on survey data...

"This paper investigates in-firm transitions from so-called 'one-euro-jobs' to regular employment. One-euro-jobs are an important workfare instrument of German labour market policy and are meant to increase employability of long-term unemployed persons, enabling them to apply for regular jobs...