In recent years, coinciding with the discussion led in many OECD countries, Germany has started to contract out placement services for the unemployed to private agencies. Whereas in the Netherlands and Australia the whole system of employment services was reorganized at once, making an...

In this paper, we analyze oil price impacts on unemployment for Germany. Firstly, we survey theoretical and empirical literature on the oil-unemployment relationship and relate them to the German case. Secondly, we illustrate this issue within the framework of a vector autoregression (VAR)...

Social assistance and unemployment assistance, which provide means tested income support (social welfare) without pre-specified time limits, are viewed as one important reason for the persistently high level of unemployment in Germany by many economists. In order to increase work incentives and,...

Based on unique administrative data, which has only recently become available, this paper estimates the employment effects of the most important type of public sector sponsored training in Germany, namely the provision of specific professional skills and techniques (SPST). Using the inflows into...

The objective of our analysis is to find out whether an increase in working time without pay compensation can be considered an adequate policy to reduce unemployment. From the perspective of economic theory the outcome is in general ambiguous: On the one hand, as the increase in working time...

This study re-estimates the employment effects of training programs for the unemployed using exogenous variation in participation caused by budget rules in Germany in the 1980s and early 1990s, resulting in the infamous "end-of-year spending". In addition to estimating complier effects with...

This paper analyzes the impact of job creation schemes (JCSs) on job search outcomes in the context of the turbulent East German labor market in the aftermath of the German reunification. High job destruction characterized the economic environment. JCSs were heavily used in order to cushion this...

We structurally estimate an equilibrium search model using German administrative data and use this for counterfactual analyses of a uniform minimum wage. The model with worker and firm heterogeneity does not restrict the sign of employment effects a priori and allows for different job offer...

This study provides empirical evidence for the economic rationality of wage rigidities. Theoretically wage rigidities can result from contracts, implicit contracts, from efficiency wages and from insider-outsider behaviour. Based on a survey of 801 firms strong support has been found for...