This paper reviews the dramatic and widely noted developments in the German labor market in the past decade and surveys the most plausible reasons for these changes. Alternative hypotheses are compared and contrasted. I argue that the labor market reforms associated with the Agenda 2010 – the...

The supply and demand framework of Katz and Murphy (1992) provides new evidence on the source of changes in socially insured full-time and part-time employment in years preceding and following the implementation of the landmark Hartz reforms in Germany. Our findings are consistent with a stable...

Two or three decades from now, economic historians will note that a hallmark of successful transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) was the speed in which it became a non-issue for the body politic. A corollary of this is the expectation that, as formerly centrally planned economies...