The Effectiveness of Qualification Measures for Employed Workers – An Evaluation Study for Saxony This paper investigates whether and to what extent employment policy measures (co-) financed by the European Social Fund in Germany meet their objective. Specifically, it is analyzed whether qualification programs for employed workers in the German state of Saxony were effective in terms of employm...

Equilibrium Evaluation of Active Labor Market Programmes Enhancing Matching Effectiveness This paper evaluates counselling programmes in an equilibrium matching model where workers are heterogeneous in skill levels. Job search effort, labour demand and wages are endogenous. When wages are bargained over, raising the effectiveness of or the access to counselling programmes pushes wages upwards a...

A Caseworker Like Me: Does the Similarity between Unemployed and Caseworker Increase Job Placements? This paper examines whether the chances of job placements improve if unemployed persons are counselled by caseworkers who belong to the same social group, defined by gender, age, education, and nationality. Based on an unusually informative dataset, which links Swiss unemployed to their casework...

Skill Based Immigrant Selection and Labor Market Outcomes by Visa Category Attracting skilled immigrants is emerging as an important policy goal for immigrant receiving countries. This article first discusses the economic rationale for immigrant selection. Selection mechanisms of receiving countries are reviewed in the context of deteriorating labor market outcomes for immigrants across destina...

This paper considers labour supply and demand shocks in a simple flow model of the labour market. We consider the propagation of these shocks in a matching model with competition between various groups of job seekers. By way of simulations we explore the extent of labour market hysteresis arising from competition between unemployed job seekers and job seekers outside the labour force. The simul...

Beyond the Labour Income Tax Wedge: The Unemployment-Reducing Effect of Tax Progressivity In this paper we argue that, for a given overall level of labour income taxation, a more progressive tax schedule increases employment. From a theoretical point of view, higher progressivity increases overall employment through a wage moderating effect and also because employment of low-paid workers is mor...

On the Optimality of a Minimum Wage: New Insights from Optimal Tax Theory We build a theoretical model to study whether a minimum wage can be welfare-improving if it is implemented in conjunction with an optimized nonlinear income tax. We consider this issue in a framework where search frictions on the labor market generate unemployment. Workers differ in productivity. The government does not o...

This paper studies the effects of unemployment policies in a simple static general equilibrium model with adverse selection in the labor market. Firms offer a contract that induces the selfselection of workers. In equilibrium, all unskilled workers are screened out and some skilled workers are rationed out. It is shown that the provision of unemployment insurance (UI) raises involuntary unemplo...

Although partially disabled individuals in Spain are allowed to combine the receipt of disability benefits with a job, the empirical evidence shows that employment rates for this group of individuals are very low. Therefore, in this paper we construct labor market model with search intensity and matching frictions in order to identify the incentives and disincentives to work provided by the par...

The Employment Effects of Low-Wage Subsidies Low-wage subsidies are often proposed as a solution to the unemployment problem among the low skilled. Yet the empirical evidence on the effects of low-wage subsidies is surprisingly scarce. This paper examines the employment effects of a Finnish payroll tax subsidy scheme, which is targeted at the employers of older, full-time, low-wage workers. The...