This paper provides a labour supply explanation to the observation that in Germany employment changes are asymmetric during the business cycle. Employment increases are slower, because the reservation wage of workers increases in times of job uncertainty. Workers are afraid in those periods of...

There is a growing concern about collective wage agreement and employment dynamics in Germany. In this paper, evidence is provided on the way collective wage agreements affect the adjustment of working hours, employment and other production factors when firms from the service sector are faced...

Der Beitrag untersucht die Verbreitung von Tarifverträgen in Dienstleistungsunternehmen sowie deren Wirkungen auf die Beschäftigungspolitik im Falle von Nachfrageschwankungen. Der empirische Teil basiert auf der ZEW/Creditreform Konjunkturumfrage bei unternehmensnahen...

A growing literature investigates how firms' innovation input reacts to changes in the business cycle. However, so far there is no evidence whether there is cyclicality in the effects of innovation on firm performance as well. In this paper, we investigate the employment effects of innovations...

Macro-level changes can have substantial effects on the distribution of resources at the household level. While it is possible to speculate about which groups are likely to be hardest-hit, detailed distributional studies are still largely backward-looking. This paper suggests a straightforward...

We consider the effects of the financial crisis and subsequent recession on world labour markets. It begins by cataloguing the adverse effects on output of the sudden collapse in demand brought about by the financial crisis in what has come to be called the Great Recession. Next we look at the...

The recent financial crises, alongside a dramatic rise in unemployment on both sides of the Atlantic, suggest that financial shocks do translate into the labor markets. In this paper we first document that financial recessions amplify labor market volatility and Okun's elasticity over the...

We use administrative data to examine the effect of a 50% benefit cut for young unemployed workers in Ireland during the Great Recession. Because the cut applied only to new benefit claims, claimants whose unemployment start dates differed by a matter of days received very different benefits; we...

We revisit the hypothesis that labor market fluctuations are driven by shocks to the discount rate. Using a model in which the UE and the EU rates are endogenous, we show that an increase in the discount rate leads to a decline in both the UE and the EU rates. In the data, though, the UE and EU...

This paper studies the mechanisms driving the persistently high unemployment rate during the last recession and mild recovery. Previous studies have examined the demographic aspect of the recession. We focus on specific industries. Consequently, we propose a methodology to decompose changes in...