The present paper has two aims. The first one concerns primarily an issue of method. I set up and analyse an explicitly stochastic model of the optimal behaviour of a firm, which recruits from a search labour market. The second aim of my paper concerns very much an issue of substance in...

Though the shared investment hypothesis of human capital theory, i.e. that employers and employees share the costs of and the return on investment in firm-specific human capital, is widely accepted, we know little about the empirical evidence. The paper shows that in German data (1984-1991)...

We develop and estimate an equilibrium job search model of worker careers, allowing for human capital accumulation, employer heterogeneity and individual-level shocks. Career wage growth is decomposed into the contributions of human capital and job search, within and between jobs. Human capital...

This paper analyzes the allocation of workers to jobs and the wage distribution in Germany. Our main contribution is to reconcile prominent empirical models of wage dispersion (Abowd et al., 1999; Card et al., 2013) with theoretical sorting models (Shimer and Smith, 2000; Eeckhout and Kircher, 2011;...

Standard economic theory suggests that individuals know best how to make themselves happy. Thus, policies designed to encourage “better” behaviors will only reduce people’s happiness. Recently, however, economists have explored the role of impatience, especially difficulties with delaying...

Social networks, or “job-referral” networks, can help make labor markets become more efficient. Outside the firm, they help workers obtain employment after displacement and secure higher-paying jobs. They can also match highly-skilled workers to more productive employment. Inside the firm,...

We examine whether low-paid jobs have an effect on the occupational advancement probability of unemployed persons to obtain better-paid jobs in the future (stepping-stone effect). We make use of data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and apply a dynamic random-effects probit model. Our...

Knowledge is key to the success of a firm. Firms and their managers acquire knowledge via channels which are often difficult to track down and quantify. By matching employer-employee data with trade data at the firm level we show that the export experience acquired by managers in previous firms...

The objective of this paper is to present a short survey of our new research results to mobility and stability of employment on a micro level. This area of conflict is analyzed from an individual and a firm's perspective, taking institutional issues into account. More than previous studies, we...

We address the concerns about rising inequality in the German labour market after the implementation of the Hartz reforms between 2003 and 2005. We focus on the quality of new jobs started between 1998 and 2010 in West Germany in terms of job stability and level of earnings. Using social...