"Based on the two IAB establishment surveys - the IAB Establishment Panel and the IAB Job Vacancy Survey - this report sheds light on the German labour market from the firms' perspective and gives information about the labour demand and resulting skills shortages for the years 2006 to 2012. With...

"In light of Germany´s transition approaches towards a sustainable energy system this paper examines differences of employment structure and wage differentials between renewable energy establishments and their sector peers. To do so, we have developed a novel data set by linking company-level...

"The resilience and growth prospects of a region depend crucially on the extent to which industry-specific human capital can be redeployed across the industries of a regional economy. To this end, we present a toolbox to analyse a region's industrial structure, development prospects and economic...

"The labor markets of most industrialized countries are polarized. This means that employment has grown in jobs at the upper and lower tails of the wage distribution, while employment in the middle part of the distribution has stagnated or declined. However, there exists no measure that allows a...

"In 2003, Germany moved from a system in which participants in training programs for the unemployed are assigned by caseworkers to an allocation system using vouchers. Based on the rich administrative data for all vouchers and on actual program participation, we provide inverse probability...

"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...

"Since 2006, the IAB develops classifications of job centres, which are regulated according to the Social Code Book (SGB) II. These classifications account for the fact that there are substantial disparities in the economic or social structure of German regions. These disparities affect the work...

"A considerable number of people, particularly the older unemployed, exhibit a variety of barriers to placement. Integrating them into employment constitutes a challenge for labor market policy. The current research report presents the results of a program aimed at older persons receiving...

"The 'Start-up Scheme' (§ 93, 94 SGB III) was 28 December 2011 fully converted to a discretionary power. Significant cost savings and a reduction of entrainment effects should be implemented by the changes. This paper discusses the results of the quantitative evaluation of the reformed...

"Almost twenty years after German reunification there are still huge income disparities between western and eastern regions in Germany. The main purpose of the paper is to show how social transfer payments reduce these inter-regional disparities. In a first step we examine inequalities in the...