"Socialist societies often emphasized the abolition of traditional social classes. To achieve this objective, educational opportunities were at times 'actively managed' and allocated to children of less educated parents. What happened to these patterns after the demise of socialist rule in...

"We present first estimates of rates of non-take-up for social assistance in Germany after the implementation of major social policy reforms in 2005. The analysis is based on a microsimulation model, which includes a detailed description of the German social assistance programme. Our findings...

"We study a two-sector economy with investments in human and physical capital and imperfect labor markets. Human and physical capital are heterogeneous. Workers and firms endogenously select the sector they are active in and choose the amount of their sector-specific investments. To enter the...

"This paper shows that a fusion of qualitative and quantitative methods in social research must not only consist of counting words in qualitative documents, exemplifying statistics by case studies, generating hypotheses by qualitative exploration studies or the like. Beyond that, typological...

"The support of start-ups out of unemployment within the legislative framework of Social Code III (SGB III) is still one of the most important instruments of active labour market policy. On August 1, 2006, the new 'Start-up Scheme' (§ 57 SGB III) replaced its predecessors, the 'Bridging...

"We analyse the role that education signals play in the transition rates from unemployment to finding a job. We compare the results for Ethnic Germans with those for foreigners from the same origin countries and Native Germans. In the first case, the two have the same labour market access but...

"This study investigates how the effects of low-wage employment and non-employment on wage prospects vary depending on qualification. We apply dynamic multinomial logit models with random effects and include interactions of the lagged labor market state with qualification to estimate...

"Using a search theoretical model, we analyse the effects of the information flow via social networks (friends, relatives and other personal contacts) by comparing monetary and non-monetary outcomes in obtaining jobs via networks versus formal methods. Propensity-score matching on survey data...

"The aim of this paper is to formalise a two-country model of trade liberalisation and technical change with heterogenous firms and search-and-matching frictions in the labour market. By considering different sectors and factors of production we allow for comparative advantages and study the...

"We consider a random matching model where heterogeneous agents choose optimally to invest time and real resources in education. Generically, there is a steady state equilibrium, where some agents, but not all of them, invest. Regular steady state equilibria are constrained inefficient in a...