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...

We study the effect of unemployment on cognitive abilities among individuals aged between 50 and 65 in Europe. To this end, we exploit plant closures and use flexible event-study estimations together with an experimentally elicited measure of fluid intelligence, namely word recall. We find that,...

Of the many labour market Hartz IV reforms that have been implemented in Germany since 2005, the role of short-term unemployment insurance has not received much attention. In this paper we examine distributional effects of labour earnings and unemployment benefits using simulated increases in...

We develop a tractable macroeconomic model with employment risk and labor market search in order evaluate the effects of labor market reform on unemployment, growth, and welfare. The model has a large number of risk-averse households who can invest in risk-free physical capital and risky human...

We analyze different alternatives how a common unemployment insurance system for the euro area (EA) could be designed and assess their effectiveness to act as an insurance device in the presence of asymmetric macroeconomic shocks. Running counterfactual simulations based on micro data for the...

In this paper the relationship between parental unemployment at time of children’s labor market entrance on the quality of their children’s first job is analyzed. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the years 1991-2012 the quality of the first job in terms of wage,...

Using data from the German SOEP, this paper analyses whether there have been (a) any significant changes in poverty rates and poverty intensities before and after the Hartz IV reforms and (b) whether there have been observable changes in the effect of employment in reducing the threat or...

From 2002–2004, the German government passed several laws that curtailed the generosity of the unemployment compensation system. One of the most ambitious changes was a considerable reduction in unemployment benefit entitlement lengths for older unemployed, which was effective during 2006 and...

Using a unique dataset for Germany that links individual longitudinal data from the GSOEP to regional data from the federal employment agency and data of real estate prices, we evaluate the impact of neighborhood unemployment on individual employment propects. The panel setup and richness of the...

This study focuses on the long term eff ects of unemployment on subjective wellbeing in a family context for 17-24 year old sons living with at least one parent, using data from the German SOEP. As fathers enter unemployment, sons‘ subjective wellbeing is not only reduced immediately, but also...