Labour hoarding in Germany: Employment effects of short-time work during the crises

During the crisis (2008-09) Germany experienced a huge decrease in GDP. Employment, however, remained surprisingly stable. A whole strand of literature has aimed at quantifying the contribution of short-time work to the German labour market miracle. In the course of this literature we estimate the treatment effect of short-time work on employment at establishment level using a dynamic propensity score matching approach. The analysis is based on data from the IAB Establishment Panel combined with administrative data on short-time work establishments from the Federal Employment Agency. Our results do not indicate any treatment effect of short-time work on employment.