Labour market developments in Germany can be separated into two major shocks: German reunification in the early 1990s, and the Hartz reforms in the early 2000s. In this paper it is argued that these two shocks divide the German wage bargaining system into the old labour market system, which is...

Marginal employment, so-called Minijobs, represent a significant part of the dependent employment in Germany. In 20121 and 2016 the RWI conducted a survey and interviewed marginally employed workers and employers with marginally employed workers in North Rhine-Westphalia. The results of the...

We build an equilibrium model of a small open economy with labor market frictions and imperfectly enforced regulations. Heterogeneous firms sort into the formal or informal sector. We estimate the model using data from Brazil, and use counterfactual simulations to understand how trade affects...