This paper provides a meta-analysis of 55 empirical studies estimating the employment effects of minimum wages in 15 industrial countries. It strongly confirms the notion that the effects of minimum wages are heterogeneous between countries. As possible sources of heterogeneity, it considers the...

In Germany, the employment response to the post-2007 crisis has been muted compared to other industrialized countries. Despite a large drop in output, employment has hardly changed. In this paper, we analyze the determinants of German firms' labor demand during the crisis using a firm-level...

Benefit sanctions imposed on non-compliant welfare recipients are a new element in the German welfare system. In practice, the sanction policy and the application of sanctions vary considerably across the 439 welfare agencies. Based on combined administrative and survey data, these differences...

Job search assistance and intensified counseling have been found to be effective for labor market integration by a large number of studies, but the evidence for older and hard-to-place unemployed individuals more specifically is mixed. In this paper we present key results from the evaluation of...

We study heterogeneity in the effects of two pension reforms in Germany that closed pathways into early retirement: the abolition of an old-age pension scheme for women and the abolition of a pension after unemployment or part-time work. We focus on heterogeneity with respect to several...

We investigate how the demographic composition of the workforce along the sex, nationality, education, age, and tenure dimension affects voluntary turnover. Fitting duration models for workers' job-to-job moves that control for workplace fixed effects in a representative sample of large...

This paper provides the first full examination of the effect of German works councils on wages using matched employer-employee data (specifically, the LIAB for 2001). We find that works councils are associated with higher earnings. The wage premium is around 11 percent (and is higher under...

We estimate peer effects for fourth graders in six European countries. The identification relies on variation across classes within schools. We argue that classes within primary schools are formed roughly randomly with respect to family background. Similar to previous studies, we find sizeable...

In Germany, the employment response to the post-2007 crisis has been muted compared toother industrialized countries. Despite a large drop in output, employment has hardlychanged. In this paper, we analyze the determinants of German firms’ labor demand duringthe crisis using a firm-level panel...

Using linked employer-employee panel data for Germany, this paper investigates whether firms implement real wage reductions in a selective manner. In line with insider-outsider and several strands of efficiency wage theory, we find strong evidence for selective wage cuts with high-productivity...