It is often argued that the labor market outcomes of several ?problem groups? of German workers suffer disproportionately in an economic downturn. These groups are women, the unskilled, and young and old workers, respectively. Using monthly individual-level data for West Germany for the period...

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...

Each year Germany and many other developed economies spend tens of billions of Euros on active measures of employment promotion with the explicit aim of contributing to the reduction of unemployment. Yet, high unemployment has universally been a persistent problem throughout the last two...

Demographic change inevitably shifts the balance between contributors and recipients in the pension system. Moreover, in the German pension system benefit levels are closely linked to the current state of economic prosperity. Therefore, in the coming decades stabilisation of old-age security...

This paper provides a preliminary assessment of recent reforms of German employment promotion policy. While several recent studies analyze the impact of measures of employment promotion for the case of Germany, no comparable study exists on the aggregate level, thus precluding any assessment of...