Marginal employment', i.e. employment at low working hours and earnings not covered by social security, has been gaining importance in the German economy over the past decade. Using a large newly available panel data set and statistical matching techniques, we analyse the effects of marginal...

This paper studies labour market policy in a society where differently gifted individuals can invest in training to further increase their labour market productivity. Furthermore, the government seeks both efficiency and equity. Frictions in the matching process create unemployment and...

Die Lockerung des Kündigungsschutzes ist ein wesentliches Element der im Januar 2004 in Deutschland in Kraft gesetzten Arbeitsmarktreformen. Dieser Beitrag diskutiert die hiervon zu erwartenden Beschäftigungseffekte. Auf Grundlage vorliegender theoretischer und empirischer Erkenntnisse wird...

While there is consensus on the need to raise the time spent in the market by European women, it is not clear how these goals should be achieved. Tax wedges, assistance in the job search process, and part-time jobs are policy instruments that are widely debated in policy circles. The paper...

The search-matching model is well suited for an equilibrium evaluation of labor market policies. When those policies are targeted on some groups, the usual juxtaposition of labor markets is however a shortcoming. There is a need for a setting where workers' productivity depends on employment...

This paper addresses the selection of smoothing parameters for estimating the average treatment effect on the treated using matching methods. Because precise estimation of the expected counterfactual is particularly important in regions containing the mass of the treated units, we define and...

This paper provides new evidence on the nature of occupational differences in unemployment dynamics, which is relevant for the debate between the structural or hysteresis hypotheses. We develop a procedure that permits us to test for the presence of a structural break at unknown date. Our...

A recent decline in geographic mobility in the United States may have been caused in part by falling house prices, through the lock in effects of financial constraints faced by households whose housing debt exceeds the market value of their home. I analyze the relationship between such house...

This paper considers a matching model with heterogenous jobs (unskilled and skilled) and workers (low and high-educated) which allows for on-the-job search by mismatched workers. The latter are high-educated workers who transitorily accept unskilled jobs and continue to search for skilled jobs....

In this paper we document the importance of framing effects in the retirement savings decisions of college professors. Pensions in many post-secondary institutions are funded by a combination of an employer contribution and a mandatory employee contribution. Employees can also make tax-deferred...