The current German system of social assistance undermines work incentives. In this book, the author investigates how they could be restored by wage or income subsidies, or by moving from a welfare to a workfare-based system which would foster the self-sufficiency of its recipients. He also...

Clemens Fuest discusses the employment and welfare effects of tax reforms in economies with equilibrium unemployment. He analyses the employment effects of tax progression, taking into account indiviual working time and human capital formation. He also compares labour and capital subsidies as...

Individuen möchten ihre Einkommensverhältnisse und damit ihren Konsum nach Möglichkeit über einen langen Zeitraum konstant halten. Dieses Ziel lässt sich am einfachsten durch Sparen erreichen. Dabei stellt sich die Frage, ob bzw. wie Erwartungen über zukünftige Entwicklungen die...

Die Dynamik auf dem sächsischen und dem ostdeutschen Arbeitsmarkt hat zuletzt spürbar nachgelassen. In den kommenden Monaten ist auch nicht mit einer neuerlichen Belebung zu rechnen. Dies ergeben jüngste Auswertungen der BUNDESAGENTUR FÜR ARBEIT und des ifo Beschäftigungsbarometers.

This volume was prepared by Benedikt Heid while he was working at the ifo Institute and the University of Bayreuth. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. It includes six self-contained...

This study was prepared by Nina Czernich while she was working with the Ifo Institute for Economic Research.It was completed in December 2010 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. The study addresses the question whether the emergence of...

"Themes of the paper are differences in unemployment rates between East and West Germany and the spatial differentiation in the East. 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall there is still a strong division between the economies and labour markets of Eastern and Western Germany. In the last...

"Facing the recent German debate on the minimum wage, this paper analyses theoretical effects of minimum wages on employment and wage distribution under a frictional setting. I??review new developments in search theory and discuss the influence of the minimum wage on wages and employment under...

"The unemployment rate in East Germany has been almost twice as high as in West Germany since unification. At the same time, employment subject to social security contributions decreased markedly. We analyse how these developments are reflected in the careers of birth cohorts born between 1937...

"We analyze unemployment dynamics for Germany on a regional basis by means of an approximate factor model. We first estimate the number of factors corresponding to the number of cycles. At least for the pre-'Hartz' reform data we find strong evidence for more than just one dynamic labor market...