Exploiting unique German administrative data, we estimate the association between an expansion in maternity leave duration from two to six months in 1979 and mothers' post-birth long-term sickness absence over a period of three decades after childbirth. Using a regression discontinuity design,...

Using linked employer-employee data, this study measures and decomposes the differences in the earnings distribution between male and female employees in Germany. I extend the traditional decomposition to disentangle the effect of human capital characteristics and the effect of firm...

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...

Discontinuities in the employment profile are supposed to cause wage cuts since they imply an interruption in the accumulation of human capital as well as a depreciation of the human capital stock built up in the past. In this paper, we estimate the return to effective experience, taking into...

Over the 2000s, many federal states in Germany shortened the duration of secondary school by one year while keeping the curriculum unchanged. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation due to the staggered introduction of this reform allows me to identify the causal effect of increased learning...

Diese Arbeit untersucht die erwerbsfÄahig eingestuften Bezieher von Arbeitslosengeld II, die mindestens einmal Arbeitslosengeld II im dritten Quartal 2006 bezogen haben. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass 16% der Bezieher von Arbeitslosengeld II im dritten Quartal 2006 während des Zeitraums 2000...

A number of contributions have found evidence for motherhood being a critical life event for women's employment careers. This study presents a detailed model for the du- ration of maternity leave in which young mothers can make a transition into a number of states related to employment and...

It is often noted that employment rates of females have been rising during the last decades. However, in contrast to men, women are often part-time employed and the allocation of working time over the life-cycle is linked to family formation. In addition, employment rates may differ across skill...