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...

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...

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...

The labor market performance of second generation immigrants is a crucial determinant of integration. Labor market returns to their different cultural traits, however, have been rarely researched within the economic literature. This study provides insight on the link between the level of...

The theoretical literature argues that labor markets outcomes are affected by real minimum wages. Real minimum wages, however, co-move with the business cycle; their correlation with labor market outcomes should therefore not be interpreted causally. We employ structural vector autoregression to...

We propose a new explanation for differences and changes in labor supply by gender and marital status, and in particular for the increase in married women's labor supply over time. We argue that this increase as well as the relative constancy of other groups' hours are optimal reactions to...