"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...

"Using representative linked employer-employee data of the German Federal Employment Agency, this paper analyzes to which extent full-time employees who earned low wages (less than two-thirds of the median wage) in 1998/99 were able to earn higher wages in the following years, and which factors...

"Die Situation von Personen mit Migrationshintergrund auf dem Ausbildungs- und Stellenmarkt zeigt, dass diese nach wie vor wesentlich stärker von Arbeitslosigkeit betroffen sind, in der Regel ein geringeres Einkommen und eine geringere berufliche Stellung als Deutsche haben. Neben den teilweise...

"We study the returns on education in Europe in a comparative perspective. We extend the model of de la Fuente [(2003). Human Capital in a Global and Knowledgebased Economy. part II: Assessment at the EU Country Level. Report for the European Commission], by estimating the values of the relevant...

"Objectives: A multitude of studies has established a negative relationship between unemployment and health. With the 'Hartz-reforms', unemployment benefit II was introduced in 2005. Whether unemployment benefit II receipt has an impact, additional to unemployment, on health, is investigated....

"This paper evaluates the impact of large changes in the duration of unemployment insurance (UI) in different economic environments on labor supply, job matches, and search behavior. We show that differences in eligibility thresholds by exact age give rise to a valid regression discontinuity...

"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...

"The vocational qualification in Germany is crucial for a successful participation in the labour market. Persons without a vocational certification carry a clearly higher risk to become jobless and they have problems to gain a sustained foothold in the labour market. In contrast, at the upper...

"The gender wage gap in Germany is smaller in firms covered by collective contracts or having a works council, partly because these institutions are associated with lower unobserved productivity differences and less wage discrimination, partly because they compress the distribution of wage...

"With the German Microcensus we study the second generation's educational attainment in Germany focusing on the descendants of classic labour migrants. Our results show that educational outcomes in terms of attending or completing the highest schooling track leading to the Abitur considerably...