This paper investigates the relationship between personality traits and female labor force participation. While research on the role of cognitive skills for individual labor market success has a long tradition in economics, comparatively little is known about the channels through which...

This paper provides a labour supply explanation to the observation that in Germany employment changes are asymmetric during the business cycle. Employment increases are slower, because the reservation wage of workers increases in times of job uncertainty. Workers are afraid in those periods of...

In this paper the impact of working hours on the gross hourly wage rate of West German women is analyzed. We use a simultaneous wage-hours model which takes into account the participation decision. First, our estimates show that the hourly wage rate is strongly a¤ected by the working hours. In...

Total employment in Germany is supposed to increase if people could realize their desired working hours. However, this back-of-the-envelope calculation overestimates the effect of loosening hours constraints, because even in a very flexible labor market there will exist hours restrictions for...

In this paper, I contrast the quality of part-time jobs - in terms of hourly wage rates - with those of full-timers. Using the Netherlands as a benchmark, helps to assess the size and seriousness of the estimated wage differentials in Germany. Based on two comparable household surveys, I...

This paper examines the wage effects of different types of career interruptions. We consider the timing and duration of non-employment spells by exploiting an administrative data set of German social security accounts (IAB employment sample) supplemented with information on the employees' entire...

Many public goods can be provided at different spatial levels. Evidence from social identity theory and in-group favoritism raises the possibility that where higher-level provision is more efficient, subjects' narrow concern for local outcomes (parochialism) could harm efficiency. Building on...

This contribution describes the linkage of microsimulation models and computable general equilibrium (CGE) models using two already established models called “STSM” and “PACE-L” used by the Centre for European Economic Research. This state of the art research method for applied policy...

In labour markets with collective wage bargaining higher progressivity of the labour income tax creates a trade-off. On the one hand, wages are lowered and unemployment decreases, on the other hand, the individual labour supply decision is distorted at the hours-of-work margin. The optimal level...

Changing the income tax progressivity in labour markets with collective wage bargaining generates a trade-off. On the one hand, higher progressivity distorts individual labour supply decisions at the hours-of-work margin, on the other hand, it reduces unemployment by exerting downward pressure...