Standard program evaluations implicitly assume that individuals are perfectly informed about the considered policy change and the related institutional rules. This seems not very plausible in many contexts, as diverse examples show. However, evidence on how incomplete information affects the...

Using the introduction of fixed long-term unemployment benefits in Germany in 2005 as a unique experiment we find strong evidence that lower unemployment benefit has an adverse effect on wages. We use panel data to identify and estimate the effect of this structural break. In western Germany the...

We exploit administrative data on exact commuting distances for a large sample of German employees and study the relation of commuting and wages. We find that it requires 1.5 times as much money in terms of higher wages for job changers to accept an increase of their commute as compared to their...

Combining a spatial equilibrium model with a search-matching unemployment model, this paper analyzes the willingness to pay for regional amenities and the regional quality of life when wages, rents, and unemployment risk compensate for local amenities and disamenities. The results are compared...

This paper investigates the spatial connotations of job search methods of unemployed people, and in particular whether search methods lead to local vis-à-vis non-local jobs. The data set used is the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), a longitudinal survey collecting yearly interviews for...

This work refers to analyses of matching processes on occupational labour markets in Germany. Up to now, all studies in this field are based on the crucial assumption of separate occupational labour markets. I outlined some theoretical considerations that occupational markets are probably not...

Over the past 50 years, the U.S. and several European labor markets have undergone two most incisive developments: job market polarization and deunionization. In this paper, we argue that routine-biased technical change is not only the driving force behind polarization, as prevalently assumed,...

This paper develops a search and matching model with hierarchical firms, human capital accumulation, internal promotions and on-the-job search. At the time of their market entry firms maximize present value of profits with respect to their promotion rule. Workers who are eligible for promotion...

Recently migration patterns in the euro area changed markedly in response to increasing unemployment disparities. This reinforced the interest in labor mobility as stabilization tool against the background of heterogeneous labor market conditions. In a data set of 55 bilateral migration...

In this paper we test the hypothesis of a wage curve against a Phillips curve for Spain within a framework which allos for these both and more general alternatives. To this end, we use data from the European Community Household Panel, which provides micro-information for the period 1994-2001....