Many previous studies try to discover job preferences by directly asking individuals. Since it is not sure, whether answers to these surveys are relevant for actual behaviour, this empirical examination offers a new approach based on representative German data. Employees who quit their job and...

We use a simple regression-based approach to measure the relationship between employment growth, hirings and separations in a large panel of German establishments over the period 1993-2009. Although the average level of hiring and separation is much lower in Germany than in the US, as expected,...

Positive assortative matching implies that high productivity workers and firms match together. However, there is almost no evidence of a positive correlation between the worker and firm contributions in two-way fixed-effects wage equations. This could be the result of a bias caused by standard...

We examine the relationship between works councils and two different types of employment separation: dismissals by the firm and voluntary quits by employees. Based on representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we find a negative relationship between works councils and both kinds...

We study the relationship between cyclical job and worker flows at the plant level using a new data set spanning from 1976-2006. We find that procyclical labor demand explains relatively little of procyclical worker flows. Instead, all plants in the employment growth distribution increase their...

Economists have long been interested in analyzing entries and exits of establishments. In many countries administrative datasets provide an excellent source for detailed analysis on a fine and disaggregate level. However, administrative datasets are not without problems: restructuring and...

The share of non-standard jobs in total employment has increased in Germany over recent decades. Research tends to attribute this in particular to labour market re-forms and socio-economic change. However, it becomes clear upon closer inspection that macro trends alone cannot provide...

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 construct a multi-country employer-employee data to examine the consequences of employment protection. We identify the effects by comparing worker exit rates between units of the same firm that operate in two countries that have different seniority rules. The results show that...