"The matching of likes is a frequently observed phenomenon. However, for such assortative matching to arise in a search model, often implausibly strong conditions are required. This paper shows that, once signals are introduced, a search model can generate even perfect assortative matching under...

"The matching of likes is a frequently observed phenomenon. However, for such assortative matching to arise in a search model, often implausibly strong conditions are required. This paper shows that, once signals are introduced, a search model can generate even perfect assortative matching under...

"Expectations regarding the economic development might be correlated due to various reasons: because individuals use the same public information and similar evaluation methods, and because of social learning or herding amongst peers. We analyse to what extent expectations are driven by herd...

"Expectations regarding the economic development might be correlated due to various reasons: because individuals use the same public information and similar evaluation methods, and because of social learning or herding amongst peers. We analyse to what extent expectations are driven by herd...

"This paper investigates the role of mismatch between job seekers and job openings for the forecasting performance of a labor market matching function. In theory, higher mismatch lowers matching efficiency which increases the risk that the vacancies cannot be filled within the usual period of...

"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...