Germany, as most other European countries, has been plagued by a persistently high level of long-term unemployment … since the early 1980's. In contrast, long-term unemployment is much less of a problem in the United States. One potential … reason for the different structure of unemployment relates to institutional differences in unemployment compensation systems …

Unemployment duration data derived from retrospective surveys often show an abnormal concentration of responses at … research based on unemployment duration data derived from the retrospective calendar information in the German Socio …-Economic Panel, where a very high proportion of all unemployment spells beginning in January or end in December of each year. We show …