The paper traces labor market reforms over the last four decades. It provides estimates of retirement incentives for a selected set of typical worker profiles across time and socio-economic groups and links these series to the labor market performance in Belgium. The results show that the...

We investigate the unemployment pathway to retirement in Germany and study the causal effects of two early retirement reforms. Reform 1 (NRA) increased normal retirement age stepwise from 60 to 65. Simultaneously, it became possible to use early retirement with benefit discounts. Reform 2 (ERA)...

Early retirement schemes and disability insurance in the Netherlands have both been reformed during the past decades. The reforms have increased incentives to continue working and have decreased the substitution between early retirement and disability. This study investigates the impact of the...

This paper explores how extended unemployment insurance (UI) benefits targeted to older workers affect early retirement and social welfare. The trade-off of optimal UI between consumption smoothing and moral hazard requires accounting for the entire early retirement system, which often includes...

Taking advantage of a complex minimum wage structure in Honduras, this paper examines how changes in minimum wages over the 1990-2004 period affect unemployment as well as the employment and average wages of workers in different sectors of the economy: medium and large-scale firms v. small firms...

Using a large linked employer-employee data set for Germany, we find that the existence of a works council is associated with a lower separation rate to employment, in particular for men and workers with low tenure. While works council monopoly effects show up in all specifications, clear voice...

Germany has always been one of the prime examples of institutional complementarities between social insurance, a rather passive welfare state, strong employment protection and collective bargaining that stabilize diversified quality production. This institutional arrangement was criticized for...

This paper studies the role of training vouchers and caseworkers in public training programs. Using a rich administrative data set, we apply matching and regression methods to measure the effect of the Hartz reform in Germany, which introduced training vouchers and imposed more selective...

We estimate the long-term effects of start-up subsidies (SUS) for the unemployed on subjective outcome indicators of well-being, as measured by the participants' satisfaction in different domains. This extends previous analyses of the current German SUS program ("Gründungszuschuss") that...

This study quantifies the short-term distributional effects of the new statutory minimum wage in Germany. Using detailed survey data (German Socio-Economic Panel), we assess changes in the distributions of hourly wages, contractual and actual working hours, and monthly earnings. Our descriptive...