Recent theoretical research has identified many ways how contracts can be used as rent seeking devices vis-à-vis third parties, but there is no empirical evidence on this issue so far. To test some basic qualitative properties of this literature, we develop a theoretical and empirical framework...

This paper analyzes the spillover effects of the first sectoral minimum wage in Germany. Using a triple differences estimation, the study examines the impact of public discussion and announcement of the minimum wage on workers and industries outside the minimum wage sector. The results show that...

This paper studies short-time work arrangements (ERTEs) when aggregate risk is partially sector-specific. In Spain, the Great Recession and the pandemic recession (aka the Great Contagion) can both be understood as being driven partially by large sector-specific shocks. However, the latter shows...

Germany has always been one of the prime examples of institutional complementarities between social insurance, a rather passive welfare state, strong employment protection and collective bargaining that stabilize diversified quality production. This institutional arrangement was criticized for...

Many Western economies have reformed their welfare systems with the aim of activating welfare recipients by increasing welfare-to-work programmes and job search enforcement. We evaluate the three most important German welfare-to-work programmes implemented after a major reform in January 2005...

We study the labor supply effects of a change in child-subsidy policy designed to both increase fertility and shorten birth-related employment interruptions. The reform yields most of the intended effects

This paper studies the role of training vouchers and caseworkers in public training programs. Using a rich administrative data set, we apply matching and regression methods to measure the effect of the Hartz reform in Germany, which introduced training vouchers and imposed more selective...

We estimate the effects of a mandate allocating a third of corporate board seats to workers (shared governance). We study a reform in Germany that abruptly abolished this mandate for certain firms incorporated after August 1994 but locked it in for the older cohorts. In sharp contrast to the...

We estimate the long-term effects of start-up subsidies (SUS) for the unemployed on subjective outcome indicators of well-being, as measured by the participants' satisfaction in different domains. This extends previous analyses of the current German SUS program ("Gründungszuschuss") that...