The financial status of the unemployment insurance system in Germany has improved markedly since 2005. Some reform measures and the upswing of the economy are the most important reasons for the favorable development. It is hotly debated how to use the surplus of the Federal Labor Agency....

This study examines how the size of trade unions relative to the labor force impacts on the desirability of different organizational forms of self-financing unemployment insurance (UI). For this purpose, we compare the outcome of a model with a uniform payroll tax to a model where workers pay...