What makes start-ups out of unemployment different?
30 January 2009
To answer this question we formulate a theoretical sketch for start-up activity out of unemployment. Furthermore, we estimate spatial autoregressive models for the regional start-up rates out of unemployment as well as out of employment with German data from 1999 to 2004 at the NUTS3-level. Characteristics describing groups of potential entrepreneurs as well as agglomeration externalities have a similar impact on both start-up rates. They are, however, affected in different ways by the regional wage level and the probability of entrepreneurial success. Moreover, the local impact of these determinants is amplified by spatial spillover and spatial feedback effects, in particular for the start-up rate out of unemployment.
IAB-Discussion Paper 4/2009
Trade unions go global
28 January 2009
Worker movements have played a crucial role in making workplaces safer. Workplace safety is costly for firms but increases labour supply. A 'laissez-faire' approach which ignores safety at workplaces is inadequate. Safety standards set by better-informed trade unions increase output and welfare. Trade between a country with trade unions (mainly in the North) and a union-free country (mainly in the South) can lead to a reduction in work standards in the North. When trade unions are established in the South, the North – including northern unions – tend to lose out. However, quantitatively, these effects are small and are overcompensated for by gains in the South.
IAB-Discussion Paper 3/2009
Occupational upgrading and the business cycle in West Germany
22 January 2009
The occupational skill structure depends on the business cycle if employers respond to shortages of applicants during upturns by lowering their hiring standards.
IAB-Discussion Paper 2/2009
In Germany, five per cent of persons in full-time employment belong to the "working poor"
15 January 2009
Between 1999 and 2005 the proportion of persons in full-time employment in danger of falling below the poverty line doubled from 3 to 6 per cent. Although the quota dropped again by 1 percentage point to 5 per cent in 2006, this reduction is once more at risk because of the effects of the financial crisis.
Brief overview
The impact of federal social policies on spatial income inequalities in Germany
12 January 2009
Almost twenty years after German reunification there are still huge income disparities between western and eastern regions in Germany. The main purpose of the paper is to show how social transfer payments reduce these inter-regional disparities.
IAB-Discussion Paper 1/2009
Multiple imputation of right-censored wages in the German IAB Employment Sample considering heteroscedasticity
19 December 2008
In many large data sets of economic interest, some variables, such as wages, are top-coded or right-censored. In order to analyze wages by using the German IAB Employment Sample the authors first have to solve the problem of censored wages at the upper limit of the social security system. The authors treat this problem as a missing-data problem and derive new multiple imputation approaches to impute the censored wages by drawing a random variable from a truncated distribution based on Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques.
IAB-Discussion Paper 44/2008
Work incentives? Ex-post effects of unemployment insurance sanctions
11 December 2008
Imposing sanctions on unemployed people by reducing their benefits is intended to bring them back into work. IAB researcher Barbara Hofmann found that such measures did indeed have a positive effect: when sanctioned, unemployed western German men and women were more likely to find a job – and not just any job, but regular employment. The study, based on administrative data from the Federal Employment Agency, applies a matching approach that takes the timing of events into account.
IAB-Discussion Paper 43/2008
International workshop on "Labour, Markets and Inequality"
09 December 2008
A workshop on "Labour, Markets and Inequality" will take place at the Federal Employment Agency in Nuremberg on 24 and 25 September 2009. In the past twenty years, income inequality has increased in many Western countries. The workshop aims at bringing the scientific world a step closer to an international discourse on social inequality in as far as it is related to labour. The event is organized by the Council for Social Policy of the Verein für Socialpolitik in Frankfurt, the Sections for Social Inequality and Political Sociology of the German Sociological Association, and the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg. Scientists from around the globe are invited to exchange their theoretical, empirical, experimental and policy-oriented views on this subject. Please submit your paper by 1 May 2009.
Call for Papers
Vouchers, contracting-out and performance standards: Market mechanisms in active labor market policy
20 October 2008
Market elements are increasingly being used in measures of active labour market policy in Germany: access to further occupational training is granted via vouchers, private placement agencies may be used when looking for a job, and just recently a wage subsidy voucher has been introduced for older persons. Do these market mechanisms contribute to improving the flexibility and effectivity of the services offered? The "IAB-InfoSpezial" presents a selection of theoretical and empirical literature – in support of the workshop of the same name.
IAB-InfoSpezial: Vouchers, contracting-out and performance standards: Market mechanisms in active labor market policy
Programme with presentations of the lectures
Bringing the jobless into work?
10 October 2008
Traditional labour market policies and the predominantly passive granting of unemployment support and social assistance have been replaced over the last ten years by activation strategies. Social transfer payments are dependent upon the willingness to accept job offers or to participate in employment promotion measures.
The book presents activation strategies in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Switzerland, contrasting these European strategies with developments in the United States.
Editors of this newly published book: Werner Eichhorst (Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn), Otto Kaufmann (Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Social Law (MPI), Munich) und Regina Konle-Seidl (IAB, Nuremberg).
To order
Leuphana University honours Professor Joachim Möller
16 July 2008
Professor Joachim Möller, Director of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg and Professor of Economics at the University of Regensburg, has received an honorary doctorate from the Leuphana University in Lüneburg. With this award, the university honours personalities "whose critical attitude is to be admired and whom the university feels close to in spirit: for the courage to ask questions and to seek answers".
Among Professor Möller's central fields of research are wage structures and wage inequality, international comparisons and regional analyses. The scope of his current research extends from the economic effects of the expansion of the EU eastwards via the impacts of minimum wages to the economic analysis of regional clusters. In connection with his academic research work, Professor Möller is intensively involved in the work of various organizations and associations. According to the Leuphana University: With Joachim Möller a researcher is being honoured "who puts his economic expertise at the service of the community and always uses his knowledge of the economic system with good judgement to instil trust and invoke vigilance".
Working poor - Poor despite full-time employment?
11 July 2008
Recent research results show that poverty is also on the increase among the full-time employed. Those employees living below the national poverty threshold despite full-time employment are known as the "working poor". The "wage poverty line" lies at 60 percent of the average full-time wage income of a said country, according to the European Union. Is this development a consequence of globalisation or of the reforms that have taken place over the last years in the area of social security systems and labour market institutions? The IABInfoSpezial provides information on the current state of research, both at home and abroad.
IAB-InfoSpezial: Working Poor
Minimum wage not causing the British many problems
07 April 2008
On 1 April 2008 the British Embassy in Berlin ran a symposium on the British policy towards minimum wages under the title "Minimum wage: minimum fuss". Four representatives of the Low Pay Commission – which makes a recommendation with respect to the level of the British minimum wage – discussed the way the minimum wage works and its consequences for the British economy with German discussion partners from politics, economics and administration. The discussion was moderated by the Director of IAB, Joachim Möller. The minimum wage has markedly reduced wage inequality; women and part-time employees in particular had benefitted, the commission members reported. On the other hand, the minimum wage did not lead to an increase in unemployment as feared by those in Germany opposing the minimum wage. The minimum wage was well accepted in the United Kingdom and there were no reasons why the positive experiences gained there should not be transferable.
Activation is no miracle cure
11 March 2008
Compulsory programmes for the long-time unemployed and social security recipients in Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have only to a limited extent led to the unemployed finding a job. Of 100 former participants who took up a job, 90 to 95 on average would have found work in any case. The integration effects of these programmes are thus similar to other labour market policy measures for the unemployed who are closer to the labour market.
IAB-Kurzbericht (IAB Brief Report) No. 4/2008
IAB-Forschungsbericht (IAB Research Report) No. 1/2008
IAB-InfoSpezial: Aktivierende Arbeitsmarktpolitik im internationalen Vergleich (Activating labour market policy in international comparison)
By comparison, foreigners in Germany are poorly qualified
22 January 2008
Migrants in the United States, Canada and Australia are much more highly qualified than in Germany or France. Along with this, they are on average significantly better educated than the population of their countries of origin. Immigrants to Germany on the other hand have even lower educational qualifications than their fellow countrymen and -women back home. The labour market researchers Herbert Brücker and Sebastian Ringer suggest controlling immigration to Germany by means of a system of points, as in Canada, Australia and the United States.
IAB-Kurzbericht (IAB Brief Report) No. 1/2008
The German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat) assesses the IAB as "outstanding"
12 November 2007
The German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat), the most important scientific policy advisory body of the Government, has given the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) very good marks. The published evaluation report states: "In conclusion, it should be said that the IAB is an academic institution which is outstanding in national terms as well as being highly esteemed internationally and one which has the potential to play a leading role at the European level."
IAB on the test block