Unemployment insurance schemes face a well-known trade-off between providing income support to those out of work and reducing their incentive to look for work. This trade-off between benefits and incentives is central to the public debate about extending benefit periods during the recent...

Empirically, not much is known about the mechanisms how labor market programs like job search assistance and training operate to support finding a job. This paper provides novel evidence to open the "blackbox": it causally links the program interventions to the dynamics of search behavior,...

We use linked longitudinal data on employers and employees to estimate how the 2003-2005 Hartz reforms affected the wages of displaced German workers after they returned to work. We also present a simple new method to decompose the wage effects into components attributable to selection on...

Wir präsentieren einen Vorschlag für die Neuausrichtung der Arbeitslosenunterstützung in Deutschland: die Einführung von Beschäftigungskonten. Anstatt Steuern/Beiträge zu zahlen, die die Arbeitslosenunterstützung finanzieren, zahlen Beschäftigte laufend auf Ihre Beschäftigungskonten...

This paper studies the role of job search assistance programs in optimal welfare-to-work programs. The analysis is based on a framework, that allows for endogenous choice of benefit types and levels, wage taxes or subsidies, and activation measures such as monitoring and job search assistance...

This paper studies the role of job search assistance programs in optimal welfare-to-work programs. The analysis is based on a framework, that allows for endogenous choice of benefit types and levels, wage taxes or subsidies, and activation measures such as monitoring and job search assistance...

Unemployment insurance (UI) sanctions in the form of benefit reductions are intended to set disincentives for UI recipients to stay unemployed. Empirical evidence about the effects of UI sanctions in Germany is sparse. Using administrative data we investigate the effects of sanctions on the...

In 2005, the unemployment compensation for long-term unemployed was reduced in Germany. We examine how this reform affected the transition probability to employment. Additionally, we inspect how this effect varies over unemployment duration. We estimate proportional hazard models using German...

Im Jahr 2005 wurde im Zuge der Zusammenlegung von Arbeitslosen- und Sozialhilfe auch der so genannte 'Aussteuerungsbetrag' eingeführt, der aus Sozialbeiträgen zur Arbeitslosenversicherung finanziert wurde: Die Bundesregierung erhob von 2005 bis 2007 von der Bundesagentur für Arbeit einen...

Sperrzeiten in Form von Leistungskürzungen sollen den Arbeitsanreiz für Arbeitslosengeld-Bezieher erhöhen. In Deutschland gibt es nur wenige empirische Erkenntnisse über die Auswirkungen dieser Sperrzeiten. Auf der Grundlage administrativer Daten wird der Einfluss der Sperrzeiten auf die...