We explore the far-reaching implications of low-wage subsidies on aggregate employment. Low-wage subsidies have three important effects. First, they promote employment of unskilled workers (who tend to be the ones who earn low wages). Second, by raising the payoff of unskilled work relative to...

This paper analyses the effects of a social assistance reform in Germany. In contrast to studies which are based on microsimulation methods we use a computable general equilibrium model which incorporates a discrete choice model of labour supply to simulate a variety of reform scenarios. The...

This paper provides a theoretical and quantitative analysis of various types of wellknown employment subsidies. Two important questions are addressed: (i) How should employment subsidies be targeted? (ii) How large should the subsidies be? We consider measures involving targeting workers with...

The unemployment rise in EU countries has been particularly strong for low-skilled workers. This observation has often been explained in terms of biased technical change and relative wage rigidities. More attention has been paid recently to an alternative mechanism, the crowding-out of...

We extend the standard quality-ladder model with heterogeneous workers by including efficiency wages and unions. We find that higher union bargaining power leads to a negative relationship between growth and unemployment. An increase in the supply of human capital, however, on the one hand...

A matching model in the line of Mortensen and Pissarides (1994) is augmented with a lowskill labor market and firing costs. It is shown that even with flexible wages unemployment is higher among the low-skilled and increases with skill-biased technological change. The two main reasons are that...

Am 26. Januar 2006 stellte das ifo Institut im Rahmen einer Bundespressekonferenz die aktualisierte Version des ifo Kombilohn-Modells "Aktivierende Sozialhilfe" vor, das eine Alternative zum heutigen Lohnersatzmodell bietet. Das ifo-Modell eröffnet bei verringerten fiskalischen Kosten...