Transitions in the German labor market: Structure and crisis

Michael Krause and Harald Uhlig ()

No 2011,34, Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies from Deutsche Bundesbank

Abstract: Since the so-called Hartz IV reforms around 2005 and during the global crisis of 2008/2009, the German labor market featured mainly declining unemployment rates. We develop a search and matching model with heterogeneous skills to explore the role of structural and cyclical policies for this performance. Calibrating unemployment benefits to approximate legislation before and after the reforms, we find a large reduction in unemployment and its duration, with the transition concluding after about three years. During the crisis, the extended use of short-time labor subsidies that prevent jobs from being destroyed is likely to have prevented strong increases in unemployment.

Keywords: German Hartz IV reforms; search and matching; unemployment benefits; labor subsidies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 E32 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-lab and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Journal Article: Transitions in the German labor market: Structure and crisis (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:bubdp1:201134

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