This paper quantifies the impact of the Hartz reforms on matching efficiency, using monthly SOEP gross worker flows (1983-2009). We show that, until the early 2000s, close to 60% of changes in the unemployment rate are due to changes in the inflow rate (job separation). On the contrary, since...

This paper evaluates the strength of information flow from employed past coworkers on the re-employment duration of displaced workers due to plant closures in Austria. Using the Austrian Social Security Database (a matched employer-employee database) we exploit the panel structure of 36 years of...

Social networks are an important channel of information transmission in the labor market. In this paper investigate how displaced workers searching for new jobs benefit from information provided by their former coworkers. In line with the theoretical and empirical literature we find that the...

This paper studies the conditional patterns of unemployment dynamics in Germany. We employ a structural VAR model and identify a technology shock and two policy shocks by using standard restrictions. Interestingly, the worker reallocation process varies substantially with the identified shocks....

Using a representative establishment dataset, this paper analyzes the incidence of wage posting and wage bargaining in the matching process. We show that both modes of wage determination coexist in the German labor market, with about two-thirds of hirings being characterized by wage posting....

The long-term earnings losses of displaced workers are substantial. We investigate the role of post-displacement occupational matching in explaining the cost of job displacement. We combine German administrative data on the work history of displaced workers with information on the task content...

When workers send applications to vacancies they create a bipartite network. Coordination frictions arise if workers and firms only observe their own links. We show that those frictions and the wage mechanism are in general not independent. Only wage mechanisms that allow for ex post competition...

This paper analyzes the effects of short-time work (i.e., government subsidized working time reductions) on unemployment and output fluctuations. The central question is whether short-time work saves jobs in recessions. In our baseline scenario the rule based component of short-time work (i.e.,...

We show that more human capital improves incentives in a standard optimal taxation problem: common assumptions about preferences and technology imply that the disutility of labor decreases less strongly in unobserved ability if agents have more human capital. Human capital thus reduces the...

When a key responsibility of a manager is to allocate more or less attractive tasks to subordinates, these subordinates have an incentive to work hard and demonstrate their talents. As a new manager is less well acquainted with these talents this incentive mechanism is reinvigorated after a...