The aim of this paper is to analyze and estimate salient characteristics of unemployment dynamics. Movements in unemployment are viewed as "chain reactions" of responses to labour market shocks, working their way through systems of interacting lagged adjustment processes. In the context of...

The empirical literature on unemployment almost exclusively focuses on the duration of distinct unemployment spells. In contrast, we use a large German administrative micro data set for the time span 1975-2004 to investigate individual lifetime unemployment (defined as the total length of all...

Mehr Beschäftigung und weniger Arbeitslosigkeit kann es in einer Marktwirtschaft nur geben, wenn die Arbeitsproduktivität, die Wertschöpfung pro Beschäftigten, real stärker steigt als die Löhne. Ist dagegen die Lohnzunahme größer als der Produktivitätsfortschritt, so bauen die...

The expansion of Western European production accelerated in the first half of 1997. Exports were the main engine, driven by a devaluation of European currencies and strong growth abroad. Domestic demand also picked up somewhat led by investment in machinery and equipment. Inflation remained at...

An Englishman once watched his first American football game. He looked intently as the team gathered into a huddle after each play. His American host asked him what he thought of the proceedings. “Not a bad sport,” remarked the visitor, “but they do seem to engage in an excessive number of...

This paper evaluates complementarities of labor market institutions and the business cycle in the context of a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model economy. Matching between workers and vacancies with endogenous time spent in search, Nash-bargained wages, payroll taxation, and...

Although the standard work week is longer in East than in West Germany, there is a higher incidence and average amount of unpaid overtime worked in the new states. We try to explain the striking differences in unpaid overtime by analyzing the labor supply side. We focus on the investment...

Aufgrund der nach wie vor äußerst unbefriedigenden Lage auf dem Arbeitsmarkt wird intensiv nach Lösungen gesucht, diese Situation zu verbessern. Dabei sind, nicht zuletzt aufgrund ihrer geschichtlichen Entstehung als "Kinder der Not" (Marburger Bank o. J.), auch die Genossenschaften in den...

Rising wage inequality in the U.S. and Britain (especially in the 1980s) and rising continental European unemployment (with rather stable wage inequality) have led to a popular view in the economics profession that these two phenomena are related to negative relative demand shocks against the...

This paper analyses the link between educational attainment and unemployment risk in a French-German comparison, based on a discrete time competing risks hazard rate model applied to comparable microdata sets. The unemployment risk is broken down into the risk of entering unemployment and the...