Early retirement options are usually targeted at employees at risk of not reaching their regular retirement age in employment. An important at‐risk group comprises employees who have worked in demanding jobs for many years. This group may be particularly negatively affected by the abolition of...

This study analyzes the causal effect of an increase in the retirement age on health. We exploit a sizable cohort-specific pension reform for women using two complementary empirical approaches - a Regression Discontinuity Design and a Difference-in-Differences approach. The analysis is based on...

We exploit a unique historical setting to investigate how refugee-specific government aid affects the medium-term outcomes of refugees who migrate as children and young adults. German Democratic Republic (GDR) refugees who escaped to West Germany between 1946 and 1961 who were acknowledged to be...

Retraining the labor force to match the demands of a modern economy is an important task during the transition process from a centrally planned to a market economy. This need is particular pressing in East Germany, because the transition process is much faster there than in the rest of Eastern...

This study investigates firm survival and employment growth of start-ups by unemployed people in East and West Germany as promoted by the Work Support Act (so called bridging allowances). In 1994, the services provided were improved considerably, which led to a sharp increase in the number of...

This paper explores the potential of an approach suggested by Manski of obtaining nonparametric bounds for treatment effects in evaluation studies without knowledge of the participation process. The practical concern is the effects of continuous vocational training in East Germany. The empirical...

We analyze the effectiveness of public works programs (PWP, Arbeitsbeschaffungsmaßnahmen) in east Germany as measured by their effects on individual future reemployment probabilities in regular jobs. These are estimated by discrete hazard rate models on the basis of individuallevel panel data....