Were the Hartz Reforms Responsible for the Improved Performance of the German Labour Market?

Metin Akyol, Michael Neugart and Stefan Pichler ()

Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) from Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL)

Abstract: From 2005 to 2011 employment rose and unemployment rates declined considerably in Germany. This favourable development followed the labour market reforms initiated in 2003, and there has been a tendency to attribute the improved labour market performance to those reforms. Causal micro-evaluations of the various measures, however, show hardly any effects on variables that can be related to employment. Rather, it seems that employment increased in response to a process of wage moderation that had already begun in the 1990s. It is possible that this moderation was itself partially a product of the reforms, but this needs further investigation.

Date: 2025-10-22
Note: for complete metadata visit http://tubiblio.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/157992/
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Economic Affairs 1 (2025-10-22) : pp. 34-47

Downloads: (external link)
https://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/27418
https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12002

Related works:
Journal Article: Were the Hartz Reforms Responsible for the Improved Performance of the German Labour Market? (2013)
Working Paper: Were the Hartz Reforms responsible for the improved performance of the German labour market? (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dar:wpaper:157992

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) from Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dekanatssekretariat ().