Germany, as most other European countries, has been plagued by a persistently high level of long-term unemployment since the early 1980's. In contrast, long-term unemployment is much less of a problem in the United States. One potential reason for the different structure of unemployment relates...

At the start of the German unification process it was a commonly held view that east German living conditions will converge to west Geman levels within a few years. This view was not only held by notoriously optimistic politicians but also by a great many of professional economists. With...

Dieser Beitrag nimmt aus theoretischer und ökonometrischer Sicht zu der Kontroverse über die Bedeutung der qualifikatorischen Lohnstruktur zur Erklärung der Beschäftigungsstruktur Stellung. Basierend auf einer Einteilung in drei Qualifikationsgruppen zeigt sich empirisch, dass die Entlohnung...

We analyze the dramatic decline of the employment share of unskilled labor in the West German economy, in particular its relation to the relatively rigid earnings structure. We find that the substitution elasticity between unskilled and skilled labor is rather low in most sectors of the economy....

This paper analyses the link between educational attainment and unemployment risk in a French-German comparison, based on a discrete time competing risks hazard rate model applied to comparable microdata sets. The unemployment risk is broken down into the risk of entering unemployment and the...

This paper deals with a critical assessment and a reestimation of the "non-accelerating in ation rate of unemployment" (NAIRU) for Germany. There are quite a few obstacles to perceiving the NAIRU as an understandable and easy-to-use analytical instrument, suitable for economic policy: the...

The paper investigates whether (unsubsidised) fixed-term contracts (FTCs) are a means of integration for the unemployed in the West German labour market. This is done by analysing whether entering into an FTC improves the employment opportunities of an unemployed person in terms of the...

This paper analyses the effects of a social assistance reform in Germany. In contrast to studies which are based on microsimulation methods we use a computable general equilibrium model which incorporates a discrete choice model of labour supply to simulate a variety of reform scenarios. The...

Diese Arbeit soll einen ersten Einblick in die Sanktionsinstrumente Sperrzeit und Säumniszeit für Leistungsempfänger der Bundesanstalt für Arbeit geben. Die Forschung basiert auf umfangreichen Individualdatensätzen der Bundesanstalt für Arbeit, der IAB-Beschäftigtenstichprobe und...

This paper analyzes the impact of job creation schemes (JCSs) on job search outcomes in the context of the turbulent East German labor market in the aftermath of the German reunification. High job destruction characterized the economic environment. JCSs were heavily used in order to cushion this...