Using a competing-risk framework of exiting unemployment to jobs in a local or a distant labor market area, this paper investigates whether unemployed individuals in West Germany choose search strategies that favor migrating out of declining regions. Moreover, the paper investigates how such...

Recent labor market reforms in Germany aim, among other things, at reducing unemployment by restricting passive unemployment measures, emphasizing local labor market policies and re-structuring public employment services. This paper uses extensive individual administrative and regional aggregate...