In 1997, the German government enacted a reform of the unemployment insurance system which lead to a reduction of the maximum entitlement length for unemployment benefits. The paper analyses the effects of this reform on the risk of unemployment and on unemployment duration of the older...

Minimum prices above the competitive level can lead to inefficient overproduction. We investigate whether this effect is more pronounced when decision makers are influenced by their social environment. Using data of minimum prices for renewable energy production in Germany, we test if individual...

Political regimes influence the contents of education and the criteria used to select and evaluate students. We study the impact of a socialist education on the likelihood of obtaining a college degree, as well as on several labor market outcomes, by exploiting the reorganization of the school...