How effective are effort targets? This paper provides novel evidence on the effects of job search requirements on effort provision and labor market outcomes. Based on large-scale register data, we estimate the returns to required job search effort, instrumenting individual requirements with...

Enforcing the compliance with job search obligations is a core task of conditional benefit systems like unemployment insurance (UI) or welfare. For targeted policy design, it is key to understand how the enforcement regime affects job search outcomes. This paper provides first estimates that...

Job search requirements constrain the effort choice of unemployment insurance recipients by enforcing a minimum number of monthly applications. This paper is the first to assess how individual search effort, job finding and job stability react to this constraint. Standard job search theory...

Caseworkers are the main human resource used to provide social services. This paper asks if, and how much, caseworkers matter for the outcomes of unemployed individuals. Using large-scale administrative data, I exploit exogenous variation in unplanned absences among Swiss UI caseworkers. I find...

Firms' labor demand responses to wage changes are of key interest in empirical research and policy analysis. However, despite extensive research, estimates of labor demand elasticities remain subject to considerable heterogeneity. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive meta-regression...

In this paper, we estimate the causal effect of ambient air pollution on individuals' productivity by using panel data on the universe of professional soccer players in Germany over the period 1999-2011. Combining this data with hourly information on the concentration of particulate matter in...

It is widely believed that globalization increases the volatility of employment and decreases the bargaining power of workers. One mechanism explaining this relationship is given by the long-standing Hicks-Marshall laws of derived demand: with international trade increasing competition and...

This paper studies the impact of immigration on public policy setting. As a natural experiment, we exploit the sudden arrival of eight million forced migrants in West Germany after World War II. These migrants were on average poorer than the West German population, but unlike most international...

Findings of prolonged non-employment spells due to more generous unemployment benefits are commonly seen as an indication of reduced job search effort and moral hazard behavior. However, to date, there is hardly any direct evidence of benefit-induced reductions in search effort. This paper...

We study how profit taxation affects plants' R&D spending and innovation activities. Relying on geocoded survey panel data which approximately covers the universe of R&D-active plants in Germany, we exploit around 7,300 changes in the municipal business tax rate over the period 1987 2013 for...