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...

Due to labor market reforms in Germany some years ago, the incentives to work changed. The paper analyzes the effects on the reservation wages for specific groups. It is assumed that reservation wages are determined by the replacement rates implied by the system of unemployment benefits and by...

This paper deals with the hypothesis of mismatch unemployment in West Germany by calculating skills-specific Beveridge curves. The results show that the mismatch for the group of unskilled is much higher than for the group of skilled and that this mismatch has increased in the last years. The...

This paper investigates the reservation wages of unemployed persons on the basis of a job-search model with non-static reservation wages using panel data from Germany from 1987 to 1998. The results suggest that reservation wages are relatively high in Germany compared to other countries....

This paper studies the reservation wages of unemployed persons and the wages offered them in Germany from 1987 to 1998, whereby special focus is placed on unemployment duration. The results of the study indicate that in contrast to reservation wages, offered wages decline considerably with...