Overindebted private households have created economic and political concern. Using measures of relative (over-) indebtedness which relate household income and debt services to different concepts of subsistence levels, this paper investigates whether severe household indebtedness is driven by...

The aggregate average unemployment rate in a given country is essentially the result of individual workers' transitions between the three core labor force states, employment, unemployment, and inactivity. The dynamics of these transitions depend both, on individual duration in a particular state...

Using harmonized micro data, this paper investigates the job search methods of the unemployed in Europe. The analysis focuses on the importance of individual and household characteristics in this context, as well as on cross-country differences in Europe. Our findings suggest that both...

We construct a theoretical model of labor markets with human capital accumulation to understand and quantify the earnings losses for young workers generated by unemployment: unemployment represents time forgone in terms of human capital accumulation, which adversely affects long-term income...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), continuous-time duration models are applied to examine whether paternal unemployment delays sons’ school-to-work transitions and thus leads to a spell of early career non-employment. The results show that substantial delaying effects of...

This study focuses on the long term eff ects of unemployment on subjective wellbeing in a family context for 17-24 year old sons living with at least one parent, using data from the German SOEP. As fathers enter unemployment, sons‘ subjective wellbeing is not only reduced immediately, but also...

This study examines an increase in the early retirement age from 60 to 63 for the group of older unemployed men in Germany. As consequence of this policy reform, the time to retirement is increased from the perspective of recently unemployed individuals and therefore serves as a source of...

This paper investigates the responsiveness of women’s labor supply to their husband’s loss of employment – the so-called added worker effect. While previous empirical literature on this topic mainly concentrates on a single country, we take an explicit internationally comparative...

We use a novel data set on firm vacancies and job seekers from a Mexican government job placement service to analyze whether changes in matching frictions can explain the large and persistent increase in Mexican unemployment after the 2008 global financial crisis. We find evidence of a...

Unemployed individuals may regain identity utility through coping strategies, which however vary with age and gender. Using highly detailed German county level data, we test whether the social norm effect of unemployment is age-dependent. The wellbeing differential between the unemployed and the...