This paper sheds new light on the effects of the minimum wage on employment from a two-sided theoretical perspective, in which firms' job offer and workers' job acceptance decisions are disentangled. Minimum wages reduce job offer incentives and increase job acceptance incentives. We show that...

This paper presents a theory explaining the labor market matching process through microeconomic incentives. There are heterogeneous variations in the characteristics of workers and jobs, and firms face adjustment costs in responding to these variations. Matches and separations are described...

Dieses Papier erläutert die praktische Umsetzung des Konzeptes der Einstellungsgutscheine (Kieler Arbeitspapier 1302 "Comparing the Effectiveness of Employment Subsidies" von Alessio Brown, Christian Merkl und Dennis Snower). Nach unserem Konzept werden den Arbeitgebern bei der Einstellung von...

It is common knowledge that the standard New Keynesian model is not able to generate a persistent response in output to temporary monetary shocks. We show that this shortcoming can be remedied in a simple and intuitively appealing way through the introduction of labor turnover costs (such as...

This paper explores the influence of wage and price staggering on monetary persistence. First, our analysis indicates that the degree of monetary persistence generated by wage vis-à-vis price staggering depends on the relative competitiveness of the labor and product markets. We show that the...

The East German labor market has hardly made any progress since German reunification, despite massive migration flows and support from the West. We argue that East Germany is in trouble precisely because of the support it has received. This paper explores the phenomenon of "the caring hand that...

This paper provides a theoretical and quantitative analysis of various types of wellknown employment subsidies. Two important questions are addressed: (i) How should employment subsidies be targeted? (ii) How large should the subsidies be? We consider measures involving targeting workers with...

This paper indicates that East Germany's unemployment originates primarily in the labor market, caused by the fast wage adjustment after German reunification. We model the resulting labor market traps in a search and matching framework, show that they are difficult to overcome, and provide...

This paper addresses the question of why prolonged regional unemployment differentials tend to persist even after their proximate causes have been reversed (e.g., after wages in the highunemployment regions have fallen relative to those in the low-unemployment regions). We suggest that the...

This paper provides a theoretical and quantitative analysis of various types of wellknown employment subsidies. Two important questions are addressed: (i) How should employment subsidies be targeted? (ii) How large should the subsidies be? We consider measures involving targeting workers with...