Germany's recovery from an unemployment disease and its resilience to the Great Recession is remarkable. Its success story makes it a showcase for labor policy and labor market reforms. This paper assesses the potential of the German experience as a model for effective, evidence-based...

Germany can be regarded as a showcase for labor market reforms. Moreover, its labor market responded only mildly to the Great Recession. This paper assesses the role of the labor market reforms for the latter development. Against this background, general lessons are drawn from the German...

The mild response of the German labor market to the worst global recession in post-war history appears as an economic miracle. In response to the crisis, Germany has shown to be a strong case of internal flexibility. We argue that important factors that have contributed to this development...

This paper characterizes optimal non-linear income taxation in an economy with a continuum of unobservable productivity levels and endogenous involuntary unemployment due to frictions in the labor markets. Redistributive taxation distorts labor demand and wages. Compared to their efficient...

This paper characterizes the optimal redistributive taxation when individuals are heterogeneous in two exogenous dimensions: their skills and their values of non-market activities. Search-matching frictions on the labor markets create unemployment. Wages, labor demand and participation are...

We propose a canonical model of optimal nonlinear redistributive taxation with matching unemployment. In our model, agents are endowed with different skill levels and labor markets are perfectly segmented by skill. The government only observes negotiated wages. More progressive taxation leads to...

We characterize optimal redistributive taxation when individuals are heterogeneous in their skills and their values of non-market activities. Search-matching frictions on the labor markets create unemployment. Wages, labor demand and participation are endogenous. Average tax rates are increasing...

This paper characterizes the optimal redistributive tax schedule in a matching unemployment framework with endogenous (voluntary) nonparticipation and (involuntary) unemployment. The optimal employment tax rate is given by an inverse employment elasticity rule. This rule depends on the global...

The current economic crisis requires fast information to predict economic behavior early, which is difficult at times of structural changes. This paper suggests an innovative new method of using data on internet activity for that purpose. It demonstrates strong correlations between keyword...

The current economic crisis requires fast information to predict economic behavior early, which is difficult at times of structural changes. This paper suggests an innovative new method of using data on internet activity for that purpose. It demonstrates strong correlations between keyword...