This study examines an increase in the early retirement age from 60 to 63 for the group of older unemployed men in Germany. As consequence of this policy reform, the time to retirement is increased from the perspective of recently unemployed individuals and therefore serves as a source of...

A positive relationship between socio-economic status (SES) and health, the so-called "health-wealth gradient", is repeatedly found in most industrialized countries with similar levels of health care technology and economic welfare. This study analyzes causality from health to wealth (health...

Utilizing a new survey of employers, this paper examines how and why establishments differ in their willingness to permit an older full-time white-collar worker to take phased retirement. Phased retirement means that an older worker remains with his or her employer while gradually reducing work...

This paper studies the role of job search assistance programs in optimal welfare-to-work programs. The analysis is based on a framework, that allows for endogenous choice of benefit types and levels, wage taxes or subsidies, and activation measures such as monitoring and job search assistance...

This paper develops a multi-period model, in which workers are matched with jobs according to imperfect educational signals and in which their subsequent productivities depend on both their inherent ability and on the quality of the job match. It outlines a sequential process, in which underpaid...

This paper evaluates an Austrian manpower training program, which is highly innovative in its content and financing – and could therefore serve as a role model for other programs. In the late 1980s privatization and down-sizing of nationalized steel firms have lead to large-scale redundancies....

In this paper we investigate the importance of labor market institutions such as unemployment insurance, unions, firing regulation and minimum wages for the evolution of wage inequality across countries. We derive a simple log-linear equation of the wage differential as a function of the...

We investigate the effect of counseling and monitoring on the individual transition rate to employment. We theoretically analyze these policies in a job search model with two search channels and endogenous search effort. In the empirical analysis we use unique administrative and survey data...