For some time now, Swiss trade unions have been demanding a substantial increase of the wages in the lowest income segments, especially in the retail and catering service industries. At present, increases for the sales personell in the retail industry stand in the forefront of trade union...

We systematically investigate the effect heterogeneity of job search programmes for unemployed workers. To investigate possibly heterogeneous employment effects, we combine non-experimental causal empirical models with Lasso-type estimators. The empirical analyses are based on rich...

The third chapter estimates negative average effects of a Swiss job search programme for unemployed persons. Those who are send to the job search programme are significantly less likely to find a job quickly than comparable unemployed persons who do not participate in such a programme. Recent...