As a reaction on high and persistent unemployment in Germany, the largest labour market reforms in post-war history were implemented between 2003 and 2005. We analyse the impact of the reform and its coincidence with an economic expansion on the efficiency of matching out of unemployment....

Als Reaktion auf die hohe und persistente Arbeitslosigkeit in Deutschland wurde zwischen 2003 und 2005 die umfangreichste Reform des Arbeitsmarktes und der Sozialordnung seit Gründung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland umgesetzt. In der Studie analysieren wir, ob die Reformen und ihr Zusammenwirken...

"This paper shows that the German labor market is more volatile than the US labor market at the business cycle frequency. Specifically, the volatility of the cyclical component of several labor market variables (e.g., the job-finding rate, the labor market tightness and vacancies) divided by the...

"From 1992 to 2005, part-time employment in Western Germany has grown by 82 percent, whereas full-time employment has shrunk by 14 percent. Behind these general figures there is substantial variation of employment schemes across industries. Beside this, the share of the service industries in...

In the last years the analysis of flow figures turned out to highly informative for labour market research and policy advice. Among researchers it is a well known fact that cross-sectional information about labour market is not sufficient to understand ungoing development. A pure sequence of...

The German employment miracle, with a weak decline in employment and low unemployment during the great recession, seems to be a good example for a successful labour market reform. Nevertheless, there are concerns about rising inequality in the labour market. In this paper we analyze the quality...

The German employment miracle with a weak decline in employment and low unemployment during the great recession seems to be a good example for a successful labour market reform. While the aggregate level of job turnover seems to be stable over time, there are nevertheless concerns about rising...

In the last years the analysis of flow figures turned out to be essential for labour market research and policy advice. The ongoing debate about how flexible is the German labour market could not been answered just analysing stock figures or turnover rates. Here we follow the useful analytical...

The number of unemployed workers in Germany decreased dramatically from its peak in February 2005 at over 5.2 million to 3.6 million by 2008. At the same time, employment increased by 1.2 million. Most theoretical and empirical analyses of this episode assume that a worker leaving unemployment...