Economic theory suggests that an extension of the maximum length of entitlement for unemployment benefits increases the … duration of unemployment. Empirical results for the reform of the unemployment compensation system in Germany during the 1980s … unemployment is not directly observed. For this reason we bound the reform effect on unemployment duration over different …

We compare information on the length of unemployment spells contained in the IAB employment subsample (IABS) and in the … German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). Due to the lack of information on registered unemployment in the IABS, we use two … proxies of unemployment in the IABS as introduced by Fitzenberger/Wilke (2004). The first proxy comprises all periods of …