The occupational panel for Germany provides a comprehensive database for studying the development of occupations over time. It is based on the IAB Employment History (BeH), which contains all social security notifications that employers have to submit for their employees subject to social...

Summary Arent and Nagl (2013) use the BA Employment panel 1998-2007 to identify effects of the German Hartz reform and find that it caused a considerable reduction of wages. Our replication study suggests that their clear and strong conclusions are based on implausible assumptions regarding the...