This paper deals with the consequences of the existence of private employment agencies on the labor market. Using a matching framework, we study the conditions of existence of private employment agencies and the consequences of competition on the market for job placement. We show that the...

Unemployment benefits, benefit duration, base period and qualifying period are constituent parameters of the unemployment insurance system in most OECD countries. From economic research we know that the amount and duration of unemployment benefits increase unemployment. To analyze the effects of...

This Paper estimates the structural parameters of a job search model with hyperbolic discounting and endogenous search effort. It estimates quantitatively the degree of hyperbolic discounting, and assesses its implications for the impact of various policy interventions aimed at reducing...

Job search is an unpleasant activity with immediate costs and delayed benefits. The tension between long-run goals and short-run impulses may lead unemployed workers to postpone repeatedly tasks necessary to find a job. In standard economic models, agents are assumed to be time-consistent, so...

"A major unemployment and welfare benefit reform took place in Germany in 2005. One objective of this reform was to more strongly encourage an adult worker model of the family, with an emphasis on activating the formerly inactive. Our hypothesis is, however, that assignments to activation...

"Targeted wage subsidies paid to employers are an important element of active labour market policies in Germany. This paper uses propensity score matching to investigate their effect on subsidised hard-to-place workers. In a first scenario, we estimate the average treatment effect of a subsidy...

"This paper estimates the effects of several German labor market programs - starting in March 2003 - on the employment outcomes of participants using propensity score matching. The main objective is to compare estimated average treatment effects for treatment and comparison groups, which vary in...

This paper evaluates the effects of job creation schemes on the participating individuals in Germany. Since previous empirical studies of these measures have been based on relatively small datasets and focussed on East Germany, this is the first study which allows to draw policy-relevant...