Germany1, as most other European countries, has been plagued by a persistently high level of long?term unemployment since the early 1980's. In contrast, long? term unemployment is much less of a problem in the United States. One potential reason for the different structure of unemployment...

We analyze the dramatic decline of the employment share of unskilled labor in the West German economy, in particular its relation to the relatively rigid earnings structure. We find that the substitution elasticity between unskilled and skilled labor is rather low in most sectors of the economy....

Although explanations of the persistence of high unemployment in Germany, in particular long-term unemployment, have increasingly focused on structural factors, there is only very limited evidence on their empirical importance so far. In this paper, these factors are analyzed based on a...

A dynamic random effects probit model is estimated on the first six waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel to test for state dependence effects in male unemployment behaviour. Estimation of the model is based on the marginal likelihood approach. In the model an individual's unemployment...

Using a retrospective monthly calendarium of individuals? major economic activities, this paper characterizes the monthly employment and unemployment rates and the monthly transition intensities between the states of employment, unemployment, and out-of-thelabor- force for the German labor...

It is often argued that the labor market outcomes of several ?problem groups? of German workers suffer disproportionately in an economic downturn. These groups are women, the unskilled, and young and old workers, respectively. Using monthly individual-level data for West Germany for the period...

In this paper, the role of the computer at the workplace will be examined in determining the wage structure in Germany. Following Krueger (1993) and using the German Socio- Economic Panel (GSOEP), cross-sectional wage regression results from 1997 and panel results from 1984-1997 are presented....

We analyze the effect of imposed benefit sanctions on the unemployment-to-employment transition of unemployed people entitled to unemployment compensation on the basis of register data from the German Federal Employment Agency. We combine propensity score matching with a discrete-time hazard...

The aggregate average unemployment rate in a given country is essentially the result of individual workers' transitions between the three core labor force states, employment, unemployment, and inactivity. The dynamics of these transitions depend both, on individual duration in a particular state...